This Is The Fish
by Blaze6
Summary: It's been almost three years since "Chasing Life". Sara's having trouble coping, Grissom's got a problem of his own, and there's a tricky case with no evidence. Oh, and Barnes is back.
1. Default Chapter

TITLE: This is the Fish  
  
AUTHOR: Blaze/lastkidpicked/whatever you wanna call me  
  
SUMMARY: It's been almost three years since "Chasing Life". Sara's having trouble coping, Grissom's got a problem of his own, and there's a tricky case with no evidence. Oh, and Barnes is back.  
  
RATING/SPOILERS: Okay, I'm going with PG-13 this time around. If it seems off, e-mail me. Spoiler-wise, there are mini-mentions of the following episodes: Bully For You; Sex, Lies, and Larvae; Anatomy of a Lye; Unfriendly Skies; To Halve and To Hold; Burden of Proof; Scuba Doobie Doo; and Altar Boys.  
  
DISCLAIMER: Okay, I do not own any of the following products/companies/people. No money will be made, and there is no infringement intended. I don't own CSI or anything relating to CSI; Everclear; OxyContin; Nirvana; The X-Files; Cosmopolitan, the Discovery Channel; Google; and Peggy Lee.  
  
FEEDBACK/ARCHIVING: Nice feedback only, please. And/or constructive criticism. Ask first before you archive it.  
  
A/N's: First off, this is directly related to events in Chasing Life. Therefore, it is very useful to read CL first. Second, a lot of the story is more devoted to the characters than the case. All inaccuracies, medical or scientific or otherwise, are all my fault. Third, any and all resemblance to anyone in real life is completely coincidental and unintentional. Fourth, I have to thank [you know who you are] for saying this wasn't also completely sucky. Fifth, ENJOY!  
  
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Today medical science recognizes that some folks aren't helped by relaxing exercises. In cases of difficult tension and nervous apprehension, doctors are now prescribing medicine. It makes those who fear they're about to quit feel like they're ready to begin, bidding their darkened spirits goodbye for the calming peace of a cloudless sky. . . (Everclear, Ataraxia)  
  
It was always wonderful to wake up with your wife and your dog, to be able to look over and see the tarantula climbing the sides of her container, to simply lay awake for a few minutes before getting up into the bright Las Vegas night.  
  
Grissom treasured these solitary moments before the apartment woke to pre- work chaos, loved to listen to Sara's easy breathing and the sounds of the city, loved the feel of Scope's weight at the end of the bed even though he denied it during the waking hours. It was in these moments he was truly peaceful, truly happy, truly aware of how lucky he was. Truly perfect, as if nothing was wrong in the world, an idea he knew as a criminalist was flawed. But right now, everything was flawless.  
  
The brunette by his side stirred, and with a touch of regret, he said goodbye to his peace. His bedside clock's LCD display glowed a cheerful 9:00 pm, and Grissom reflected that they had no need for an alarm-Sara's internal clock was impeccable, and if she was told what time to get up, she was up. In two years he hadn't seen her miss a night.  
  
She grumbled, rubbing her eyes and stretching, narrowly missing Grissom with an outstretched arm. Her clock was perfect, she was up, but Sara hated it. She never had been and never would be a morning-or in this case, night-person. People who were cheery when she awoke were to be viewed with suspicion and irritation, and Grissom had learned to leave her alone. Sara was set into her 'morning' routine, she had the coffee machine in the kitchen programmed to start producing at 8:55; by the time she had made her way to the kitchen, the caffeinated liquid would be ready to be consumed. After two cups, some food and a shower, she was fine, but before that. . .well, the phrase "Don't mess with Texas" came to mind.  
  
"Hi," he said quietly, testing the waters. Her response would dictate how the night went, he called it the Sar-ometer, and it, like her internal clock, was hardly ever wrong.  
  
"Go away," she growled.  
  
Ah, it was going to be one of those nights. The cases would be agonizingly difficult as usual, but they would be nothing compared to Sara. It was nights like these that he was glad he was shift supervisor: he could throw her bad attitude onto another member of the team, let her work off whatever it was that made her feel like hell, and then go home like nothing had ever happened.  
  
"I'll take Scope out," Grissom offered, and her only reaction was to grunt approvingly and pull the covers over her head.  
  
The golden-haired dog bounced with anticipation as he dressed, pausing only to allow him to slip on her leash before bounding out the door. The pair spent half an hour in the park near their home, burning off the young dog's energy by throwing tennis balls, one after another, ten in all. The park was ten minutes from the building, so the dog received nearly an hour of exercise, and they did this twice a day.  
  
Scope was still exuberant as they returned, and Grissom remembered that Sara normally took her out, which resulted in about twice the exercise in the same amount of time. It was alright, though, Grissom generally did more training, so Scope had slightly more mental exercise with him.  
  
Speaking of training. . . "Scope, find Sara," he commanded at the door of the apartment, letting her off the leash, she took off like lightening. The smell of coffee permeated the air, and he noted with curiosity that the shower wasn't running. Normally, she'd be waking up under the spray by now. He shrugged. Maybe she was ahead of schedule; it wouldn't be the first time.  
  
Scope dashed out of the bedroom to rebound off of his leg, then ran back to the bedroom. He followed her to the room, expecting to see his wife getting dressed.  
  
Sara was still in bed.  
  
"Sara?" Grissom asked, concerned. This was not like her at all.  
  
She turned to lay on her stomach, not answering. Definitely not like her. He could count on getting some kind of a grunt at least, generally speaking.  
  
Grissom sat next to her still form on the bed, touched her shoulder. "Hey, what's going on?"  
  
She rolled over to look at him through half-lidded, glassy eyes. She looked like she'd been drugged, or like she'd been drinking. Sara didn't drink, hadn't since a friend of hers was killed by a drunk driver, and he couldn't think of anything she'd eaten or drunk in the last few days that he hadn't shared.  
  
The look in her eyes was confused, unaware of her surroundings, like all of the thoughts in her head were jumbled up, and Grissom made the quick decision to call Catherine. Neither of them was going to work tonight.  
  
As he reached for the phone, it rang, startling Sara out of her daze. She blinked twice and shook her head, trying to shake off the cobwebs.  
  
Grissom answered with a brisk, "What?"  
  
"Hi, it's Catherine, I need both of you here, now."  
  
He reached over to put his hand on Sara's forehead to check her temperature, she ducked away from it, whispering, "No" like a petulant child. "Cath, I don't know if that's possible," he answered.  
  
"Gil, it's important. A murder came up, and you know Nick, Warrick, and I are still working that case from last night."  
  
"Well, Sara's sick, I don't know when we'll be in."  
  
Catherine sighed heavily, the noise created a large amount of static to flow through the line. "Just.get here as soon as you can, okay? I'll go over to the scene, get prelims from Brass. Nick and Warrick can handle themselves for a few hours."  
  
"Thanks, Catherine," Grissom said, hanging up.  
  
"I'm not sick," Sara stated firmly. "I'm fine."  
  
Only his eyes moved to look at her, doubt explicit in his expression. "You slept in. You never sleep in."  
  
"Well, I did today. Doesn't mean anything." She sent him her patented Sara glare.  
  
"It could mean everything," he started. His next comment was delayed by Sara leaping up to run to the bathroom. Knowing that no one wanted company while vomiting, Grissom remained seated on the bed. "How are you?" he called after two minutes. "Headache?"  
  
The toilet flushed. "Shut up, Grissom," she responded, sounding ill.  
  
"You okay to go to work?" He stood and opened her dresser, placing clothes on the bed, trying to pick out a shirt and a pair of pants that matched.  
  
"Of course," Sara said, walking into the room. "And, no, I don't have a headache." 


	2. Chapter Two

"Damn it!" Sara's voice cut across the scene, causing Grissom to look up from the body and find her. She was standing, camera hanging loosely in her hand, looking at something on the ground. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"  
  
"What it is?" he asked when he reached her side.  
  
Sara sighed heavily, gesturing towards what appeared to be a footprint. It was a large smudge in the dirt, with no tread marks and, while it looked to be about the size of a shoe, it was an oval. "You know why we haven't found any fibers, or hairs, or any trace except for what's consistent with the vic?"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Check out the footprint."  
  
"Looks like a print you'd get from a HazMat suit."  
  
"Close enough. You've heard of those crime scene suits? They were developed to prevent anything from the CSI-hairs, fibers-from getting deposited at the scene. Great idea, right? No one's going to argue against a scene that's less likely to be contaminated, no matter what the cost."  
  
"Some of the bigger departments have them," he mused. "It's an excellent idea, except for that the suits are hard to work in, and they're expensive."  
  
"You spent ten thousand on a Super-Sniffer," Sara pointed out. "The sheriff nearly had your ass for that."  
  
Grissom shrugged. He wasn't one for politics, he couldn't remember if he'd voted in the last elections. Turning back to the print, he asked, "So what do these suits and your print have in common?"  
  
She gave him a slow smile. "One of the forensics magazines did an article on the suits a couple of months ago. The article came with shots of the prints the suits made, so that there wouldn't be confusion if one of the suits left a print. It matches. Perfectly."  
  
"Good job," Grissom complimented.  
  
"I'll check the journal's pictures to be sure, call the manufacturer to see if we can borrow one, get a list of all the Nevada owners," Sara suggested. "But, Gris? Somebody's out there with a crime scene suit killing people, and we have no evidence but this suit."  
  
  
  
"When are you and Gris going to buy a house?" Nick drawled as he read the sports section.  
  
Sara glanced at the Texan, then shrugged and returned to her book. "I don't know."  
  
"I thought you knew everything," he teased, spearing a French fry from his take-out container. "Between you and Grissom.there's nothing you don't know. Your children are going to be encyclopedias."  
  
They were on lunch break. Grissom, Catherine, and Warrick were still getting food at the deli; her husband had called a few minutes ago asking if she wanted anything-Sara had declined, choosing to eat the salad she'd put in the refrigerator yesterday.  
  
"I don't know the future," she offered. "Why do you ask?"  
  
It was Nick's turn to shrug. "I don't know.I guess it's pretty standard to buy a house after you're married a while."  
  
"A house does not equate security, or a happy marriage," Sara pointed out. "Besides, when have Grissom and I been standard?"  
  
Nick chuckled. "Guess you're right. How long have you been married, anyway?"  
  
Sara thought for a long time, before giving him a slightly panicked look and said, "I'm not sure."  
  
"Not sure about what?" Grissom asked as he entered the room, trailed closely by Warrick and Catherine. All three of them were holding brown paper bags with the deli's logo on them.  
  
"Gris, how long have we been married?"  
  
He too looked slightly stricken. Checking his watch, Grissom said, "Two years, five months and seven days. You want how many hours, too?"  
  
His precision made Sara grin as she shook her head. "No thanks."  
  
"Okay," Grissom said, taking out and unwrapping his sandwich, turkey with pesto. He took a bite, relishing its flavor. He noticed Sara staring at it hungrily, and asked, "Want a bite?"  
  
She shook her head. "I'm vegetarian, remember? It looks really good, though."  
  
"Hey, Sara?" Nick asked. "Do you miss anything about meat since you turned herbivorous?"  
  
Nick was honestly curious, and Sara knew it would take an act of God to change his meat-loving Texas mind to vegetarianism. "Steak," she offered. "Hamburgers. Beef jerky. But I can't eat it, I've tried. I see a burger and it transforms into a charred body. I can't even go near pork after that night Gris and I stayed up with that pig."  
  
Her phone rang at that moment, barring any response. "Sidle," she answered. Sara listened to the caller, nodding periodically, saying, "Thank you," before hanging up.  
  
"Who was that?" Catherine asked.  
  
"Manufacturer of those crime scene suits. Company's called Forenstech, short for Forensic Technologies, Inc. Bad news, Grissom, they're not as rare as I thought. Almost a hundred in Nevada."  
  
Grissom shrugged. "Could be worse."  
  
"Grissom, they're spread out all over the state!"  
  
He shrugged again. "So we'll have to make a lot of phone calls."  
  
"But-" She was interrupted by Grissom's phone ringing. He answered and listened, then said, "I'll tell her," and hung up.  
  
"Time to go," he said. "That was Brass, someone found another body. Similar MO."  
  
"Another one?" Sara exclaimed. "Are you serious?"  
  
"Two in one night," Grissom replied calmly. "Guy's busy." He looked at his sandwich with regret, and sighed. "I didn't get to finish my lunch."  
  
"Give me the keys. I'll drive," Sara requested. "You can finish your sandwich," she added with affectionate amusement.  
  
As they walked out, bumping into each other with every step, Catherine looked at Warrick and Nick and said, "Youngest old-married-couple I've ever seen." 


	3. Chapter Three

This was excitement, Sara reflected. Forget roller coasters, nothing could compare to the rush of flashing lights, crime scene tape, that feeling of utter joy that came with the possibility of another puzzle. She turned off the Tahoe, the engine grumbling to silence, and she hopped out, grabbing an evidence kit on her way.  
  
Grissom was not far behind her, and she waited a few seconds for him to catch up before they walked up to Jim Brass, who was talking with a younger cop. "Hey, Brass," Sara said. "What do we got?"  
  
"Virtually identical to the one a few hours ago, coroner says the two were killed around the same time. . .GSW to the forehead, looks like a suicide, but the trajectory is off. No gunshot residue on the hands. Get this: the victim's been identified as Marshall Williams."  
  
"That's the previous vic's husband!" Sara exclaimed. "Weird."  
  
"Yeah," Grissom agreed. "Anything else?"  
  
"There's a tape recorder by the body," Brass told the pair. "I was thinking another Millander, but it doesn't match up."  
  
"Have you listened to it?" Grissom asked.  
  
The detective shook his head. "Thought I'd leave that to you."  
  
  
  
"Hey, Ga-ary!" A female's sing-song, taunting voice opened the tape. "Gary B-A-R-N-E-S, Barnes! Hey, baby! I heard about your S.S. gig, just wanted you to know: This is the Fish. Bye!" The tape clicked off.  
  
"You want to tell me what 'This is the fish' means, Gary?" Sara asked. She was sitting across from a shackled Gary Barnes, who stared stoically at his last victim.  
  
"I ain't seen the Braves play a game all year," he drawled, sighing. "Nevada is the shit, and I don't mean that in a good way. No one lets me watch baseball. How ya doin', Sara Sidle? Looking good, 'cept. . .well, your mark's fading. Want me to fix it for you, make it nice and vivid?" Barnes traced his left cheek.  
  
"Gary, fuck off," she said cheerfully, hiding what she truly felt. Barnes was a master of the mind game; if she gave him anything, he'd take it and run with it.  
  
"You got hitched!" he said excitedly, eyeing her wedding ring. "Let me guess, your mentor, boss-man. . .Isn't he a bit old for you?"  
  
Grissom chose that moment to walk into the interrogation room.  
  
"And here's our bride-groom now! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you Gil Grissom!"  
  
The scientist raised an eyebrow with disdain. "He giving you anything?" Grissom asked.  
  
Sara shook her head. "Nada," she said, directing her comment and a scowl to Barnes. "What does 'This is the fish' mean, Barnes? It's not this difficult."  
  
The prisoner merely smiled lazily, not answering.  
  
Grissom jumped in with, "Gary, you son of a bitch, I already know what half of it means, I know where it was recorded and when, I know who asked that woman to record the message, I know why. You want me to tell you, or are you going to open up?"  
  
"Bring it on, hubby," Barnes dared. "I bet that's what the missus here says. 'Oh, Grissom, baby, sweetie!' Vomit."  
  
Sara's fists clenched as she fought back the urge to break Barnes' nose again. Her husband, ever calm and unemotional, chose to hide his anger and tell Barnes all he knew. "It was recorded in a soundproof room, maybe a bathroom, in Laughlin. That woman, on the tape? That was the girl you killed in Las Vegas three years ago. . .I'm sure you remember her, the last one you killed here. . ." Grissom shrugged. "I have to hand it to you, Gary, not a lot of guys like you plan this much. Taping something three years in advance? 'S.S?' You already had Sara here picked out, weeks before you actually got to her. The only thing I can think is that you knew one of these days you were going to end up in prison, so you have a friend out there with this tape and a plan. . .you've been waiting for this moment for three years. Incredible. One question, though. How'd you get her to read it so calmly? Didn't she know she was going to die?"  
  
"Only Sara knew she was going to die," Barnes drawled. "Didn't you? Sidle, you knew that every time I came down there, you were getting closer."  
  
"Shut up, Gary."  
  
The prisoner shrugged his orange-clad shoulders. "Fine. You want to know what the fish is? Watch your back." 


	4. Chapter Four

She was back in Georgia, back in the basement of that house, back smelling her own coppery blood, feeling it drip down her face and congeal as she waited desperately for someone to come. She had never told Grissom that the most frightening parts of the nightmarish encounter with Barnes were those moments after he had cut her face, waiting for someone to get her, listening to the footsteps of all the people searching the house, not having the strength to call for help. She had never told him this because he had made the fear go away, it hadn't seemed important to tell him at the time, she had been so happy to get the hell out of there, to see him again. She should have told him, it would have explained why she hated to be left alone during the first few months after, especially at night.  
  
She was going to tell him as soon as she woke up from this nightmare.  
  
Barnes was leaning over her now with a piece of plastic piping, cackling gleefully as he swung it into her back. The whole experience was happening backwards, it didn't make any sense.  
  
Oh, look. There's the hammer- "Sara."  
  
The hammer was talking? What the hell? The hammer hadn't talked before. "Sara!"  
  
Grissom's voice. Scope barked. "Scope's not alive yet," she told herself.  
  
"Excuse me?" Grissom asked as the brunette muttered something about the dog. When he didn't receive a response, he prodded her gently with a finger. "Sara, wake up."  
  
"Not this time, Barnes," she mumbled, throwing out a fist in response to his poke. Unlike the night before, Grissom did not miss the fist, it connected firmly with his right eye.  
  
"Ow, shit!" he swore loudly, reaching up to touch the quickly swelling and very tender area. "Damn it, Sidle!"  
  
Still caught in her dream, convinced she had punched Gary Barnes, Sara smiled. Then the floor dipped away from her, she rolled slightly with it as the walls of the basement faded in and out, finally disappearing into the bright light of their bedroom.  
  
Sara blinked twice, her eyes adjusting to the brightness. She propped herself up slightly, seeing that both Grissom and the dog had left the bed and the room at some point, and Grissom had turned on the lights. "Gris?" she called, puzzled. He hardly ever got up in the middle of the day anymore.  
  
"In the kitchen," he snapped. What the hell was he so angry about? Migraine, she decided, even though it seemed odd that he would get a migraine at-she checked the clock-2 in the afternoon.  
  
Sara rose, grabbing one of Grissom's dress shirts to pull over her tank top. It wasn't cold in the apartment, but it wasn't exactly warm, either. She padded to the kitchen, where her husband sat with a forensics textbook, holding a bag of ice to his right eye. He squinted at the book, his glasses still lying on the nightstand by the bed, trying to read with one eye.  
  
The book could be explained. He had been asked by a colleague to edit it, and Grissom was taking painstaking care with his editing, frequently asking her if things made sense or if they were too complicated. He had had the book for weeks now, sometimes having enough time to edit between cases, sometimes not.  
  
The ice, however. . .she couldn't think of any reason he would have ice on his eye. "Hey, babe," she said softly, and Grissom turned with a fierce look. "What's with the ice?" Sara asked, gesturing to her own eye.  
  
"You hit me," he growled, turning back to the book.  
  
"I what?" she asked, not believing what he said.  
  
He swiveled sharply towards her, pulling the bag of ice away from his face. A dark bruise was forming around his eye. "No more boxing," he ordered.  
  
"Oh, my god. I was dreaming," she explained hastily. "I must've thought you were Barnes and I lashed out. I'm so sorry, Grissom."  
  
Sara reached out to touch his face, gently tracing the bruise. Grissom backed away from her touch. "You should be lucky I'm not having you arrested for spousal abuse," he groused, but she could see in his eyes that his anger was lifting.  
  
She chuckled softly, replying with a small smile and, "I'd turn myself in if I didn't know it was an accident."  
  
  
  
He was sucker-punched sometimes by how much he loved her, needed her. She was ten feet away but it felt like it was ten miles; just the act of her leaving the room made the kitchen feel small, oppressive, as if the walls were coming closer and closer to him. Whenever he had doubts or when they fought, he thought of these moments when she was so close but so far, and he remembered all over again why he had told Catherine nearly three years ago that he couldn't imagine waking up without Sara.  
  
The object of his thoughts was getting dressed for work, and he rose, replacing the ice in the freezer, putting it next to a sample of blood, and traced her footsteps to the bedroom.  
  
She was lacing a thick leather belt through the belt loops on her hip- huggers, the hem of her black T-shirt with the words "I HATE Georgia" written in red tucked under her chin as she slipped the belt to the proper notch. Her belly was exposed, and while he couldn't see it, he knew she had a six-pack hiding under a thin layer of baby fat. He wanted to reach out and touch her smooth skin, but he didn't want to disturb this moment.  
  
"Gris, you want to hand me the brush?" Sara asked, raising her head and pulling the shirt down, not turning to face him.  
  
He was slightly startled by her request, he hadn't realized she knew he was there, so he handed her the hairbrush without comment. "You're beautiful," he murmured as he reached her side. "I'm crazy for you."  
  
"I should be saying that to you," she laughed, combing her hair. "After what I did to you earlier. . ."  
  
She was avoiding his compliments. For someone who took so much pleasure in being right, and perfect, at least at work, Sara couldn't take a compliment about herself. She was uncomfortable with the attention, with the idea that she too was beautiful. "I mean it," he said with conviction. "When I told you that I've only been interested in beauty since I met you, I meant it."  
  
"Good," she said, raising her eyebrows slightly to say That's enough. Sara put the hairbrush down on the dresser, checked her part in the small mirror next to the brush, straightening it. She knew he was slightly hurt by her refusal to accept a compliment, but it wasn't in her nature.  
  
Turning back to him, she ran the back of her hand down his cheek, leaned in and kissed him softly, and said, "I appreciate it, I do, I just don't know what to do or say when you tell me things like that."  
  
"You could say thank you," he suggested glibly, winking at her before closing the distance between their lips.  
  
  
  
"Walk into a door?" Catherine asked, voice dripping with sarcasm, when she saw Grissom's black eye.  
  
He gestured towards his wife, who was reading a file on the couch. Sara looked up and they shared a glance. "Sara can tell you everything you need to know," Grissom replied, giving the brunette a half-smile.  
  
She rolled her eyes and mouthed, "Bastard," then turned to Catherine to explain, "I accidentally punched him while I was dreaming. Thought he was Gary Barnes."  
  
"Oh, I totally see the resemblance," Catherine teased, watching gleefully as Sara's face tightened.  
  
"Hey, Grissom, what'd you do. . .?" Nick started, as he walked into the room.  
  
". . .Walk into a door?" Warrick finished, coming in just behind his friend. The duo chuckled as Grissom replied, "Heard it already."  
  
"Let me guess," Warrick said slowly, a smile on his face. "Smackdown at the Grissom-Sidle residence."  
  
"Sara, did you just get tired of the bugs?" Nick asked with faux-sympathy. "You should have her arrested for spousal abuse, Gris."  
  
Sara's jaw set as she gave the pair a good view of both of her middle fingers. "Oh, sorry. Muscle spasm," she snapped at Grissom's disapproving look. "Oh, Nick? Warrick? Next time we're in the ring together, I'm gonna make sure you look worse than him," she added to her occasional sparring partners, pointing at Grissom.  
  
"Sara. . ." 


	5. Chapter Five

Grissom stared into his coffee, watching the liquid swirl gently around a red straw. Sometimes focusing on something simple like his coffee would clear his mind, open it up to the case. . . sometimes staring at coffee drowned out everything but the evidence. He had solved many cases this way, but not today.  
  
The pain in his eye had lessened to the point of disappearing, but there was a new tide of discomfort rising in his chest. It wasn't physical, it was emotional, and no matter how much he had thought it would go away, Barnes' comment had stayed with him.  
  
Isn't he a bit old for you? It echoed in his ears, old for you?  
  
He didn't think Sara knew he had heard it, he didn't think Sara knew he had seen the look of awareness that had come over her face, as if she was thinking, Yes, he is. . .  
  
He didn't think Sara knew how much the idea had affected him.  
  
One of these days, she's going to leave you. . .his inner voice taunted. One of these days, she's going to wake up and realize she's better off with a younger man. . .  
  
Grissom sighed as a wave of depression passed over him. He hated to admit it, but his voice was probably right. He didn't hear Catherine enter as he stared woefully into the coffee.  
  
"What's up?" the blond asked, and he turned slowly to meet her eyes.  
  
"Catherine, what do you think about Sara and me?" The question, seemingly out of nowhere, caused her to fold her frame into the chair across from his desk. She pulled her knee to her chest, resting her head on it.  
  
"You guys are great together," Catherine offered with a small smile. "Perfect for each other, really. Why? You're not fighting, are you?"  
  
He shook his head, confirming the gesture with, "No." Grissom sighed again, staring into his cup for a moment before asking, "Is the age difference a problem?"  
  
The what? Why was he worried about that? "Only if you make it a problem," she said. "When I heard about the two of you getting together, the only problem I saw was the whole boss-subordinate issue, not the age difference. And the two of you don't have any problems with that, so. . .Why?"  
  
"I've been thinking about it," he admitted hesitantly. "What if she decides one day that I'm too old? That she should be with someone younger?"  
  
"Well, I can't see the future, Gil, so I can't say. But Sara adores you. She's built her whole world around you and this place. She's too in love with you and too much of an adult to make it an issue."  
  
"But what if she does?" He sounded lost, looking for reassurance or confirmation of his beliefs.  
  
"The way I see it, she's stuck with you this long, she's not going anywhere. If she wasn't going to stay with you, she would've left you during the Barnes. . .thing. Sara would never do something she disagreed with just because it makes other people happy."  
  
"True," he conceded.  
  
"Where's this coming from?" she asked. "Three days ago, you were completely happy, now you're in this funk. I don't like it, Grissom."  
  
"Barnes said something to Sara," he confessed after a few silent moments. "She doesn't know I heard it." He told Catherine what had happened at the prison.  
  
She listened patiently, like the good friend she was, waiting until he'd stopped and given her a plaintive face she hadn't seen in quite a while. "Well," the blond started, looking for words. "This is Barnes we're talking about. He likes to play with the two of you. He's probably just trying to cause tension and angst for his own entertainment. Like a writer."  
  
Grissom sighed, his jaw working as he tried to come up with a response. "I. . .I know that, up here," he said finally, tapping his head. "It's the internal part I'm having trouble with."  
  
"The evil little self-doubt devil working overtime again?" she asked with empathy. "He took enough time off, he's got to work three times harder now?"  
  
"Something like that," he nodded. "Cath, could you. . .go now? I need to think about this alone."  
  
Catherine rose willingly from her seat, crossing behind his chair to touch his shoulder reassuringly. "No problem, Gil. I'll be around if you want to talk."  
  
"Thank you," he said softly as she walked purposefully out of the office, his eyes returning to his coffee, the color of Sara's eyes.Catherine turned back to look at the entomologist, thinking, as she'd thought before, ah, Sara, you're going to kill him one of these days. . .  
  
Either that or save his life.  
  
  
  
"It's their most recent model, brand new, never been touched before," Sara said giddily, looking down at the white material that made up the crime scene suit she was wearing. "They sent two: one for comparison for my case, and one for the department. I think I'm in love."  
  
"Goody," Catherine said sarcastically. "Listen, Sara. . ."  
  
"Grissom has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to one of these puppies," she interrupted, continuing enthusiastically. "I've been working in it for the last hour and it's easier to work in than those damn coveralls we have in Auto Detail. And, yeah, white sucks as a color, but it's so comfortable."  
  
"Sara," Catherine said firmly. "I don't give a crap about the suit right now, okay?"  
  
The brunette looked crestfallen that Catherine didn't share in her happiness, but only for an instant. She shrugged, her face saying, your loss. "So what's up? I know you're not here to chat about the suit, or my case, so. . ."  
  
"Something's up with your man," Catherine said bluntly. "He's watching his coffee."  
  
Sara's eyebrows narrowed, and she reached up to pull the hood of the suit off of her head. "He's watching his coffee? And, I'm supposed to do. . .what, exactly. . .about that?" Her lips quirked into a half-smile, and Sara shrugged again. "He's just being Grissom. Nothing to worry about."  
  
"He's upset."  
  
This caught Sara's serious side. "Why?"  
  
"I can't tell you," Catherine said, shaking her head. "You need to go talk to him."  
  
  
  
Sara came bearing fresh, very hot coffee, which she promptly spilled on the pristine white crime scene suit. "Crap," she whined. "Now it's dirty!"  
  
Grissom looked up at the white-clad brunette, surprise on his features. He hadn't heard her come in, and the fact that she looked like an astronaut with a coffee-stained uniform did nothing to alleviate his surprise. "Where'd you come from?" he asked, completely serious.  
  
"I brought you fresh coffee," she said, immensely proud of herself. "I figured if you were going to be staring at the stuff all day, you might as well get a warmer cup." Sara looked down at the suit wistfully. "I spilled some of it, though."  
  
"The suit's washable," he said absently. "You aren't wearing the evidence, are you?"  
  
She rolled her chocolate eyes at him, chuckled softly at the insinuation. "Would I wear evidence? The manufacturer sent two."  
  
Sara was too damn cute sometimes. That little gap-toothed grin of hers, her pride in the suit, her enthusiasm. Her hair was pulled back in a loose bun, that combined with the first three made her look like she had on the very first day he'd met her, beautiful. And she had brought him coffee in the suit. . .no embarrassment problem at all. Although. . . "How'd you know I was staring at my coffee?"  
  
"Catherine," she replied simply. "She said you were upset about something, but she wouldn't tell me what. Wanna share with the class?"  
  
"Thinking about you," he explained.  
  
"So I got you all upset?" she teased. "Ouch."  
  
"Barnes actually got me upset," Grissom admitted, bracing himself for the very revealing conversation that was rushing at them full speed. "Lock the door."  
  
"Uh, Gris, I'm sure I don't have to remind you of the 'no affection at work' policy, do I?" Sara grimaced, looking at the ceiling. "I mean, aren't there cameras in here? That's really not my thing anyway."  
  
"Sara, did you have to crawl into the gutter to get into that suit?" he asked, astonished. "And what do you mean that's not your thing? You're a Mile-Higher, remember?"  
  
"Grissom, I was twenty-two, I was going to Miami, and Ken Fuller had the most amazing eyes . . ." She sighed. "I'm not saying it's right or that it isn't strange, because it wasn't good and. . . Stop looking at me like that!"  
  
He raised his eyebrows in a "Who, me?" expression.  
  
"Gris, it was an impulsive decision that I, for the most part, regret.like most of my impulsive decisions."  
  
"Like marrying me?" Finally, they were back on topic.  
  
She looked at him like he had just suggested day shift was better at solving cases. "No, never. What did Barnes say to you?"  
  
"You were there. 'Isn't he a bit old for you?'" The question was in his eyes, challenging her to agree or disagree.  
  
"My god, Grissom. Are you serious?" Sara stood directly in front of him, kneeling down to meet the sad, questioning blue of his eyes. "Look, I love you. That wouldn't change if you were a hundred years older than me, that wouldn't change if you were younger, that wouldn't change if we were born on the same day."  
  
"Positive?" His voice was still down, but he was definitely cheering up.  
  
"I married you, didn't I?" She smiled at him, but it didn't have the desired results.  
  
"My father married my mother. That didn't stop him from leaving her. Leaving us."  
  
Oh, God. This was more serious than she thought. They stared into each other for a full minute in silence, then Sara reached up, pulling his head down. So much for the 'no contact' policy, she thought, kissing him hard. "You ever see your father kiss your mother like that?" she questioned. He shook his head. "Were they friends, Grissom? Or were they just married?"  
  
"I don't remember." She shook her head at him.  
  
"No, Grissom. You remember stuff like that. My parents, they're friends. You can see it."  
  
"They're still together," he reminded. "My parents divorced."  
  
"You know what my father does? At least once a month, if not more?"  
  
"What?" He was beginning to lose patience, getting irritable, as he always did when he wasn't perfectly clear on where the conversation was going.  
  
"He'll leave the house, comes back in a suit and tie, like he's going to a formal event, and takes my mother out. He's done this. . .forever. And they don't even have to go anywhere special. They'll go to the beach sometimes, both dressed to the nines, and just talk. I think they're crazy, but it's held their marriage together. Because they're friends. They treat each other more like friends than most couples I've seen. It's. . .different. It jaded me."  
  
"What are you saying?"  
  
"I'm saying that we're friends, Grissom. I'm saying that I grew up watching this perfect romance, and it completely messed me up. I've gone through, god, five or more failed relationships because I couldn't be friends with those guys. So, here I am, married. To you."  
  
"Really?" he interrupted sarcastically.  
  
"Grissom, we were friends first. I married a friend, because he was the only friend I've ever fallen in love with. And friendship doesn't have age boundaries. I love you, Grissom. Not your age."  
  
"You're too smart for me." She chuckled, kissing him again lightly.  
  
"I have to get back to my case, okay? Don't you worry about me or how I feel."  
  
-------------------------------------------------  
  
More coming soon. Maybe next week. 


	6. Chapter Six

The prescription bottle tumbled from her locker, rattling to the floor, where it rolled a few inches and stopped. Sara hastily reached down and scooped it up, shoving the bottle to the back of the small locker. She glanced around the room quickly to make sure no one had noticed, then closed the door and replaced her lock. Convinced that her actions had gone unnoticed, the brunette slipped her jacket over her shoulders and left the locker room, humming an Everclear song to herself. "I know the truth about you," she sang softly.  
  
As the door closed with a soft click, Grissom stepped to his wife's locker. She had acted extremely suspicious when that bottle had fallen, paranoid almost, and being Grissom, he couldn't leave it alone.  
  
He popped the lock off of the locker in an instant, years of investigating robberies had taught him exactly how to break through a combination lock. Grissom reflected, as he hunted through the locker for the bottle, that he could very easily slip from criminalist to criminal. . .without being caught.  
  
Paydirt. The unlabelled bottle, tainted orange like most prescription bottles were, came out of the locker easily. It was about half full of white pills. Grissom shook one out and sniffed it, no discernable odor. Not mints then, he concluded. Looking it over, he noticed a brand stamped into the pill, but he didn't recognize the stamp. It looked like any other white pill he'd seen in his life, but why would she be hiding it?  
  
Grissom turned his attention to the bottle itself, slipping the pill into an evidence bag. The bottle was pretty standard, the cap told him it had come from Walgreens. Bits of adhesive remained on the bottle, the label had been taken off recently. The question of why came again. If Sara had done it, why? She'd missed a piece, which suggested to him that she didn't care that much about people knowing what was in it. But why had she taken the label off in the first place?  
  
The piece she had missed had the word "OxyC-" typed on it.  
  
The pieces clicked together in his mind. OxyContin. Long term pain relief, derivative of morphine, had become more popular in recent years as a drug because when it was crushed and snorted it produced heroin-like results. Very popular in small towns. Easy to OD on. Very addictive. Names of whole towns nearly obliterated by the drug and prescription fraud raced past him. He felt dizzy, weak, trying to rationalize the reasons Sara would have it, trying to put the picture of the Sara he knew together with the picture these pills were presenting.  
  
How had he not known?  
  
Sara wore her heart on her sleeve and he hadn't known she was in love with him. Pills would've been a thousand times easier to keep from him. . .but, God, they were married now! Their communication had increased tenfold in the last three years, he couldn't imagine how he hadn't noticed.  
  
Grissom told himself to slow down, to talk to her, to get the pill analyzed before he jumped to any conclusions. Act like the scientist you are before you accuse her of anything.  
  
If it was OxyContin, she hadn't gotten it for legitimate reasons. She never complained of migraines, of pain in her knee. . .the arthritis medication pretty much took care of that. Who would prescribe it to her? At any doctor's office, she would've had to tell them about the Vicodin she had been on before, the withdrawal she had suffered from that. . .  
  
She had lied to him. It pounded through his system with every beat of his heart. She had lied to him.  
  
  
  
"What the hell is this, Sara?" Grissom asked, holding up the bottle, rattling the pills inside. She lied to me.  
  
She blanched, swallowed hard before asking, "Where'd you get that?"  
  
Deer-in-the-headlights didn't describe her expression nearly enough. "Good question," he snapped, the betrayal rocketing through him again. "Where did you get them?"  
  
"Gris. . ." Sara couldn't get her tongue and jaw to cooperate with her to tell him another lie.  
  
"Are you snorting it?" He couldn't remember her sniffling much recently, not like Catherine had when he first met her, when she was still caught in the cocaine trap. "Damn it, are you snorting it?"  
  
"No," she said quietly, and looked away from him.  
  
"What the hell are you doing with OxyContin, Sara?" Her head shot up, a look of disbelief and entrapment on her face. "Greg ran a sample, it's Oxy," he confirmed. "How long? How long have you been taking it?"  
  
"Just before the start of this case," she mumbled, looking somewhat betrayed. You have no idea, sweetheart. You only think you're feeling betrayal right now, you aren't sitting over here.  
  
"How long before?" he demanded.  
  
"Six weeks," Sara murmured, averting her eyes.  
  
"You've been taking it for three months!" he exclaimed, disbelief tainting his words.  
  
"Not every day," she protested. "Just when I need it."  
  
"Why do you need it?"  
  
"It numbs everything," she admitted hesitantly. "It makes things go away."  
  
His voice cracking, the heartbreak in his eyes finally showing through, Grissom asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
She laughed sadly. "Grissom, you think I don't know you're holding grounds for immediate dismissal? I wasn't going to tell you."  
  
"You're getting it from a doctor?"  
  
She closed her eyes and nodded. "I told her I was having migraines."  
  
"Why didn't I know?" The question was completely rhetorical, but she chose to answer anyway.  
  
"It's not like Vicodin, it's not making me crazy."  
  
"So that morning before this case started, when you were sick. . ."  
  
"Hangover," she acknowledged. "I took two, I was only going to take one."  
  
"You could have died." The words came out more coldly than he had intended. "I could have lost you forever, you know what that would do to me?"  
  
"I know," she choked, tears coming to her eyes for the first time. "What are you going to do?"  
  
He sighed. "I don't know. You're right, this is grounds for dismissal, but. . ." He couldn't finish, just seeing the tears stream down her ashamed face made him want to cry. "Come here."  
  
Sara crossed the office, head hanging like a kid who had broken a major rule and was expecting the worse. He wrapped her in a fierce embrace, resting his forehead on the top of her head. They stood in silence for a minute, his shirt soaking where her tears fell. "I can't lose you," he murmured. "We'll work this out, because I can't lose you, not at work, not at home."  
  
  
  
His hand lay protectively, possessively, on her belly, resting just under her shirt, as they laid together on the couch watching a show on Navy SEALS on the Discovery Channel. She wasn't sure why they were watching, but Grissom seemed engrossed. They weren't more than an inch apart, but Sara felt like it was a thousand miles, even as Grissom pretended nothing was wrong, that it was a normal Saturday night.  
  
"I talked to Catherine today," she offered, as six beefy guys lifted a thick log and carried it up a sand hill. "She gave me the name of a place. . ."  
  
"Are you going to go?"  
  
"Don't know," she said, her eyes not leaving the screen. "I might just go back to my parent's place for a little while, take a break. That might help."  
  
"Whatever works." Grissom's voice sounded distant, absent, even as his hand began slow, soothing circles on her skin. She hated the way he could shut off completely and still act like he cared.  
  
"I'm sorry," Sara said, after a few moments. "I never meant to do this to you. I never meant to hurt you."  
  
"I hate it when people lie to me," he said, the animosity she felt rolling off of him in waves was only one step up from the wall he had put up. "And I really hate it when you lie to me." Grissom shifted to look her in the eye. "I didn't care about the pills, Sara. I was concerned, of course, but I didn't care that much. I cared that you didn't have the guts to talk to me about whatever was bothering you, that you had to do this. I cared that you had hid this from me, because I was under the impression that we could talk to each other!"  
  
"We can," she murmured, looking away from his fierce gaze. "We are. . ."  
  
"I thought I knew you, Sara."  
  
"You do know me," she choked, feeling a rush of tears. How could he be so damn cold? "You know me better than I do."  
  
"Obviously not." She cringed as the icy words hit her ears. "The Sara Sidle I know, the Sara I married, wouldn't have done this."  
  
On the screen, a sailor said, "It's the teamwork, really. You have to be able to trust your shipmates, you have to know them, or you're dead. Simple as that."  
  
Grissom scowled at the words, pushed himself off the couch and left the apartment, the door clicking behind him, leaving Sara shaking on the couch, fighting back tears.  
  
Simple as that. 


	7. Chapter Seven

The first gift he sent was an orchid, on the second Monday she was there. Her mother fawned over it, as Sara tried to read the card through her tears. The picture of the city wasn't terribly impressive, but the simple words made her reach for the phone and dial their home number, just to hear his voice. Wish you were here, love Grissom.  
  
Tuesday, a teddy bear arrived, a Get-Well-Soon card attached, and again, she couldn't help grabbing the phone and talking to him.  
  
With Wednesday came daisies and a small box of chocolate, a note with his scrawl read, "I already ate the ones you don't like. . .call me."  
  
By Thursday, Sara had learned that the delivery woman's name was Sally, who had three kids and wished her husband "loved me this bad." Sally brought a bouquet of flowers and an invitation: "I'll meet you at the body farm in a week. I'll bring the body, you bring yourself."  
  
Friday's gift was a phone call. Sara laughed at the kitchen table, as Grissom suggested a glass of warm milk every night. "It has tryptophan in it, it'll make you feel better."  
  
Saturday went ungifted.  
  
Sunday's gift was Grissom himself, showing up dressed to the nines, asking her father's permission to take her out to dinner. "I can't believe you drove all the way out here for this," she said with a smile. "What about work tomorrow?"  
  
He shrugged, kissed her, and said, "My policy right now is you first, work second."  
  
  
  
Roger Sidle awoke to the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, a hushed voice saying, "Got to be quiet," a soft laugh, and the dull thud of his daughter's door closing. He frowned.  
  
"Leave them alone," Ann commanded softly. He hadn't realized she was awake. "They haven't seen each other in two weeks."  
  
"I don't care if they're married or not. That's my baby he's got in there," Roger grumbled. As much as he was still living like it was 1968, when it came to Sara and a guy, he acted like it was 1948.  
  
"Now you know how my father felt," she replied with a smile. "Sara's an adult, she can make her own decisions."  
  
"I know that. It doesn't mean I like it." They lay next to each other, adding another night together to thirty five years of nights, not speaking, until Roger asked his wife, "Got any earplugs?"  
  
  
  
"So, I heard you had a good time last night," Ann said cheerfully to her son-in-law, who began choking on his freshly squeezed orange juice. "Sara certainly seems happier."  
  
"Mom!" Sara exclaimed with embarrassment, her face turning a particularly bright shade of red.  
  
"What?" Ann asked innocently.  
  
"Can we not talk about this at the table, please?"  
  
"I'm just talking about the date, honey, not what happened after." Two mouthfuls of orange juice spewed across the table.  
  
  
  
She looked like a goddess, kneeling by the rose bush behind the house. The sun peeked through the thick trees to land on her shoulders; her hair, falling around her face, glistened with golden highlights. He watched her in awe, struck yet again by the feelings she created in him. He couldn't think of a moment where he had loved her more.  
  
"What're you doing out here?" Grissom asked quietly; she turned with a slow smile and rose to her feet.  
  
"Just hoping I haven't ruined everything."  
  
"No, you haven't." He gestured to the rose. "I didn't realize anyone had planted that."  
  
Sara nodded. "Mom did. . .recognize the place?"  
  
He went to her side, standing close enough that their shoulders brushed, and replied, "Vows, two and a half years ago. Weekend wedding, you, me, your parents, and your father's friend the judge officiating. The rose was his gift, he said it symbolized the need to be careful with each other, because 'A rose may be beautiful and perfect, but it still has thorns. You have to take care of it, or the beauty fades away and the thorns take over.'"  
  
"I can't believe you remember that."  
  
"I remember everything that strikes me as true."  
  
"I remember Uncle Rich being confused that I wouldn't call you by your first name."  
  
He shrugged. "It only sounds natural when Catherine or I say it. Besides, I think I'd die of shock if you ever did."  
  
She turned away from him to ask, "Heading home?"  
  
He nodded. "I have to get back to the case, but I'll be back next week to take you home, okay?"  
  
"Okay," she said, subdued. "Better get going." A small, sad smile flickered across her face, and she looked like she was about to cry.  
  
"Sweetheart. . ." He took her face in his hands and kissed her. "Don't cry, please."  
  
  
  
Grissom's phone rang about half an hour into his drive back to Vegas. He gave the trilling instrument a withering look; he hated answering the phone while he was driving. With a heavy sigh, he grabbed it, hitting the power button, and growling, "Grissom."  
  
"If you don't turn around right now and take me back with you, I'm moving back to San Francisco."  
  
"Hello? Who is this?"  
  
"Grissom, don't fuck with me right now, I want to go home."  
  
"Sara?"  
  
"Gris, stop it. Come get me."  
  
"Are you sure?" he asked, maneuvering the car into a tight U-turn.  
  
"I'm packed, ready and waiting. All I need is you. . .and your car." Silence reigned on the line as he pushed the gas pedal closer to the floor. "Gris, I know you don't want to trust my instincts right now, but I have this burning need to get back to Vegas, right now."  
  
"I trust you," he protested. "I'm on my way, okay?"  
  
"Great!" She hung up.  
  
Sara bounced into the Tahoe before he had a chance to turn the engine off. Her bags were carelessly thrown in the back seat, narrowly missing Grissom's suit, which was hanging from the window. He was about to complain when she grabbed his lapels and kissed him hard.  
  
"Hi," she said breathlessly a few moments later.  
  
"Hi."  
  
"Thanks for coming back." She slipped her seatbelt on enthusiastically.  
  
"No problem," Grissom said, dazed. "Ready to go?"  
  
"Drive," she commanded. "Onwards, Jeeves, let's go, come on," she ordered, snapping her fingers impatiently.  
  
"What's the rush?"  
  
"Never you mind, Mr. Grissom." So this was Sara straight from her parent's house. He wasn't sure he liked it. "Let's go!"  
  
Grissom's phone rang as they rolled into Las Vegas. He looked at the ringing device with disdain, as it belted out the 1812 Overture. "Sara, fix it," he commanded. She'd been fiddling with the phone an hour ago, he surmised that she'd changed the ring.  
  
"I like it," she protested as she answered it. "Grissom's phone, Grissom number two speaking."  
  
"Grissom number two, Sara? Scary," Warrick said.  
  
"Well, technically, I am Sara Grissom now, Warrick." Grissom would never admit it, but he loved hearing her call herself that. Very caveman, he chastised himself, but it sounded so good. "What's up?"  
  
"You guys back in town?"  
  
"Headed past the Rio right now," Sara answered.  
  
"Cool," Warrick said. "Tell Gris that there was another homicide, will you?"  
  
"Warrick, you have to give me more than that," she warned.  
  
"Fine. . .it's a match to your case."  
  
"The crime scene suit one?" Grissom looked to his wife, whose excitement was growing.  
  
"Uh, yeah, sort of," Warrick avoided.  
  
" 'Uh, yeah, sort of?' Come on."  
  
"It's a perfect match to your case. The Georgia case. Only. . .it was a kid."  
  
Sara blanched. "No, no, no. Warrick, don't lie to me."  
  
"You think I would joke around about something like this? I wouldn't wish what happened to you on anyone, let alone a little kid."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"Are you on Las Vegas Boulevard?" At her affirmation, he continued. "Okay, we're on Howard, in the empty lot where they're putting in that new casino-hotel deal, so. . ."  
  
"I know how to get there. We'll be there in five minutes." She hung up.  
  
"What'd Warrick want?"  
  
"We're going to Howard, right now. There's been another murder. . .Oh my god," she exhaled, wiping her face with both hands.  
  
"What?"  
  
"That bastard Barnes. . .sent someone after a kid. Warrick says. . .it's like me." 


	8. Chapter Eight

Catherine had her face buried in Warrick's shirt, his arms wrapped tight around her shuddering frame as he looked at anything but the small corpse. Nick stared numbly at the boy, raising the camera like a shield, the flash blinding, the sound of the film advancing and the flash charging made him cringe. The world seemed to be going in slow motion, the darkening sky added to the effect.  
  
A rookie sat with his head between his knees, red rimmed eyes hardly looking at their identification as he logged the pair into the scene.  
  
"If it's too much, just go back to the car," Grissom told her. "No one's going to think any less of you for leaving the scene."  
  
"I will," she replied, trying and failing to sound strong.  
  
Every step to the body was like a prisoner walking to his death, slow and falsely confident, each knowing that certain pain waited at the end of their path.  
  
Nick looked up from the camera with a shaky smile. "Hey, guys. Cath and Warrick are. . ."  
  
"Taking a break?" Grissom asked with understanding. "You want us to take over for a little while?"  
  
Nick looked from his boss to the camera to the body. "I. . .I'm not done yet," he realized, paralyzed, his eyes locked onto the remains. "The photos-"  
  
"Can be done by someone else," Grissom said firmly. "Nick, take a break." He reached out and took the camera from the younger man's hand; Nick nodded and walked out of the scene. Grissom turned to Sara, who was ignoring the body with everything she had, desperate for a pill. "You ready?"  
  
"Yeah. . ." She didn't sound terribly sure, but who would be? Together, they turned to the body.  
  
He was eight years old, with chocolate brown hair and a cleft chin. The shredded overalls he was wearing hardly covered the extensive bruising that covered his tiny body. Sara fought back the urge to throw up, seeing the S- shaped scar etched into the boy's left cheek, marring the once adorable face. She felt dizzy, like she would faint, knowing exactly what he had gone through.  
  
Grissom raised the camera to his face, and took a shot. His mind flashed between seeing the boy and seeing Sara laying on the dry grass. "Any message?" he asked, breaking the silence. She absently rolled a pair of gloves on her hands, reaching to move the body. " 'S and G, sitting in a tree. . .This is the fish!'" she read, the words bright with blood. As she rolled the body back to it's original position, the boy's eyelids fell back, revealing one blue eye and one brown.  
  
"Genetic anomaly," Grissom explained. "Mutation."  
  
"Is that aerated blood, on his face?" Sara asked, hiding the spike of pain that came with the message and the boy's blank eyes.  
  
Grissom looked to the frothy pink substance which surrounded the boy's mouth. "Swab it, we can have Greg test it. Generally, you don't get that with. . .beatings. You get it with gunshots to the lungs, other puncture wounds."  
  
" 'S and G, sitting in a tree. . .'" Sara puzzled. "Logical ending is 'K-I- S-S-I-N-G. . . First comes love, then comes marriage. . .'" She trailed off as she realized what the killing of the boy meant. " 'Then comes the baby in the baby carriage.' God, Grissom, brown hair, one blue eye on the right, brown eye and scar on the left, cleft chin. . .he's supposed to be ours."  
  
  
  
"It's not blood, but. . .it does have some protein in it."  
  
Sara glared at the wild-haired Greg. "Why don't you just tell me what the hell it is?" she snapped. She was less angry than she sounded, Greg noted.  
  
"Summer food, calves like it in its original form . . ."  
  
"I am not in the mood for your shit, Greg, so just give me the results." Or not.  
  
"I scream, you scream. . ."  
  
"Ice cream?" she exclaimed.  
  
"Strawberry," Greg elaborated. "You know, food's one of the most common ways pedophiles get kids into their cars."  
  
"I know what pedophiles do," she snapped, hands shaking lightly as she added, "This wasn't a pedophile, okay?"  
  
  
  
"The stuff around his mouth was strawberry ice cream," she told Grissom as he went through the boy's clothing; she dropped into a chair to watch him work. "Not blood, but still. . . "  
  
"Pedophile?"  
  
She shook her head. "Doc Robbins told me there was no sign of sexual assault, so. . . no."  
  
"Barnes make any phone calls in the last two weeks? Any mail, outgoing and incoming?"  
  
"Brass is still working on getting the phone records, but the warden's pretty sure he hasn't. Same with the mail." Grissom nodded, turning the overalls inside out, scraping the seams for trace. "Have you found anything?"  
  
"Barnes is one sick son of a bitch," he offered. "But you knew that."  
  
"Has he been identified?" she asked, gesturing to the tattered scraps of fabric.  
  
"Sean Gregory. His mother came by earlier. Robbins gave her pictures because she couldn't handle seeing the body. He's been missing for two weeks." His voice was detached, clinical, the way it got when he was too involved.  
  
"Gris?" He turned to her, questioning. "I know you've told me this more times than I can count, and I never listen, but you have to back off a little."  
  
"Have you?" he challenged.  
  
"No, but I want to." He shot her a disbelieving look. "I do, Grissom, I really do. And I know that on this case, I can't."  
  
"Neither can I. Neither can Catherine, or Warrick, or Nick. Don't tell me to do something you can't."  
  
"I hate this case, babe," she said, closing her eyes and letting the endearment slip off her tongue. "I hate it so much."  
  
"But not as much as you hate Gary Barnes."  
  
"No, not that much," she conceded with a small laugh. Sara's smile faded away as she stared at the fabric. "What kind of person kills a little boy just to get back at someone? What the hell did I do to Barnes?"  
  
"For starters, you ran his case in San Francisco. Nothing too bad but it made him angry as hell. Second, and most importantly, you survived, with minimal damage. And then you put him in jail."  
  
"I pissed him off so he kills three people?"  
  
"To be fair, he didn't kill them."  
  
She exhaled sharply. "That doesn't make a bit of difference to the victims, or to me."  
  
"There's no use feeling guilty about these deaths, Sara." Grissom turned to the ALS, slipping on a pair of orange goggles, handing her a pair. "Hit the lights."  
  
The room was washed in the eerie blue glow of the ALS. Sara crossed her arms over her chest as Grissom ran the light over Sean's tattered clothes. "Getting anything?"  
  
"Nothing," he said, turning off the machine. Sara turned the lights back on. "No blood, no semen, no nothing. Did he kill the kid and redress him once the blood dried? These clothes are completely shredded. Although. . .The mother said these were Sean's favorite clothes. . .that could explain the wear and tear."  
  
"Well, if this guy is following Barnes' M.O, then he left the clothes on until the end, when it was time to write the message. Even then, he'd only cut the back of the shirt, or raise it to the shoulders, so he could write the message. . .just a matter of tracing, then. It's like carving a pumpkin for Halloween, first you draw the face, then you make the cuts." Her forehead wrinkled in concentration. "Was permanent ink found on the body?"  
  
"If he did it like he'd carve a pumpkin, I'd say no."  
  
"But you don't know for sure."  
  
"I'm just running with your evidence, Sara."  
  
She nodded, raising an eyebrow as she looked to the floor for an answer. "What about the boy's father?" she asked, meeting Grissom's eyes.  
  
"Robert Gregory, thirty-six, five foot six, a hundred and forty pounds. White male, brown hair, brown eyes. Killed in a head-on crash three months after the birth of his son. I worked it. So he's not a suspect, and we can't interview him about his son."  
  
"Do you remember every case you've worked?" Sara questioned, observing the entomologist resume his examination of the clothing.  
  
"It was a decapitation. Those are hard to forget."  
  
"Decapitation?" She sounded too interested, interested to the point of diversion. "The head-on was between a bicycle and the bumper of a pickup. Gregory was on the bike, he got tossed under a garbage truck. . .It looked like a kid pulled the head off a Barbie." He shrugged. "Well, if Barbie had strings attaching her head to her torso."  
  
"Grissom, that's disgusting."  
  
"Yes, it was." Grissom raised his head to look her in the eye. "So, can we get back to this case?"  
  
"What are we going to do about the clothes?" Sara inquired, switching gears as asked. "We've pretty much cleared this of viable evidence."  
  
He sighed, removing his glasses. "I. . .I don't know. We can put them in the drying room for now and see if anything falls between now and next shift." 


	9. Chapter Nine

"Grissom?" she asked, poking her head out of the bathroom. He looked up from "Applied Psychodynamics in Forensic Science" with a "Hmm?"  
  
"Could you wash my back?" Sara asked, without a hint of innuendo. "It's covered in ink, and I can't reach to get it cleaned off." She flashed a nervous smile, tapping her fingers against the doorframe, her version of stationary pacing. "I mean, it's really bugging me, 'All finished' written back there, but it isn't coming off," she explained rapid-fire, so anxious she looked like she was about to rip the doorframe off.  
  
"Sure," he answered cautiously, marking his page in the magazine and placing it on the couch. Sara anxious made him nervous, and he wondered for a single instant if she was on to something with the OxyContin, if it numbed this kind of behavior.  
  
Under the shower's spray a few minutes later, he scrubbed at the imagined ink and the words Barnes had written with a loofah and peach scented shower gel as Sara stood stock still before him. "You missed a spot," she commented. "To your lower left. . .perfect." She turned to rinse off, kissed him quickly. "Thanks."  
  
"No problem."  
  
She looked down at the loofah. "You're going to smell like peach," she apologized. "Not very He-Man Women Hater's Club."  
  
He shrugged. "I'm secure enough to smell like peaches," Grissom assured her. "Besides, I've always liked girls, except when I was eight."  
  
"No one likes the opposite sex when they're eight, it's a given." She immediately thought of Sean Gregory, who probably thought that all girls had cooties, who was never going to have the chance to think differently.  
  
"Sara, don't even go there," he warned as the sad expression passed over her face. "Leave work at work. There will be no rabbit chasing in this house."  
  
She snorted. "Kiss me if you think that'll work."  
  
"Oh, I'll kiss you, but only because I know it won't work." He leaned into her, but did not touch her, instead whispering, "You know, some marriage counselors suggest showering together in order to strengthen the bond."  
  
"Right, like we need to have a stronger bond," she said with sarcasm. "Cite your source."  
  
"Cosmopolitan." His answer had the desired effect, she exploded into laughter.  
  
"You read Cosmo? When?" She giggled. "I don't believe this, my husband read Cosmo."  
  
"Only once," he protested. "I was at the doctor's office, waiting for you to get done. It was Cosmo or some crap about bass fishing. Besides," he shrugged, deadpan, "I wanted to find out the secret to tighter buns."  
  
"Grissom's a girl!" Sara sang with a smile. "Next thing I know, you'll be asking me if your blue shirt makes you look fat."  
  
"You better be careful, or I'm going to have to show you who really wears the pants in this house. . ."  
  
"You mean me?"  
  
"Ooh, you're askin' for it. . ." he warned.  
  
"Damn straight!" Sara replied with a grin. "Bring it on. . ."  
  
  
  
"Honey?" Sara cringed at the nickname, but turned anyway with a questioning look. "Does my birthday suit make me look fat?"  
  
"Oh, God, Grissom. . ." she said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not going to dignify that with a response."  
  
"Too late," he said. "Actions speak louder than words. . ."  
  
She rolled away from him with a groan. "I don't know why I married you," she grumbled.  
  
"Because you love me," he replied cheerfully. "And I'm brilliant."  
  
"Why are you so damn cheerful?"  
  
He shrugged. "Guess you just bring out the merry in me."  
  
Sara scowled into her pillow. Why couldn't he be normal? Oh, right, her mind helpfully supplied. He's Grissom, he studies bugs, blood, and bodies. You wanted normal, you shoulda stuck with Hank. Her scowl deepened. Nine- to-five, blond-and-blue, "I can't believe you called!" twelve-year-old-boy, the most exciting thing he's ever done was be a paramedic and he can't even handle the smell of death. That kind of normal I can live without, thank you very much, she told herself. Besides, Grissom's a challenge, a puzzle, and God knows I love puzzles.  
  
"Love you," he mumbled, finally starting to drift off.  
  
"Me, too."  
  
"That's good."  
  
"I think so," she replied. He was so strange when he was sleepy. . .  
  
"Time to sleep the perfect sleep. . ." Another yawn and he was out like a light.  
  
Sara lay awake for an hour, thinking about Sean Gregory, wishing Grissom hadn't flushed the OxyContin down the toilet all those weeks ago. This case would be so much easier to deal with if. . .No, she told herself. You are not going to go fake chronic back pain to a doctor you've never met to get a sample of something you don't need. But God, it would make this easy. . .You don't need easy, remember? You like challenges.  
  
Besides, you promised him. . .  
  
I won't do it, she thought, with a glance to the man sleeping beside her. I'm not going to get up and get dressed and hunt through a phone book to make an appointment with a new doctor and go through a whole new physical where I have to remember to cringe at exactly the right moment just to get a sample of something that I have to hide just to feel like me again. I won't do it. I promised him. I can't hurt him.  
  
I won't do it.  
  
  
  
I can cancel, she thought. If I leave right now, I can make it home and he'll never notice I was gone. I can cancel.  
  
"Sara Sidle?" If I don't answer, they'll think I'm a no-show, and they'll forget I had an appointment.  
  
"That's me," she heard herself say, standing with a grimace that was just perfect, not too hard and not too soft, just the right mix that shouted chronic pain.  
  
I can lie, say it's not so bad, I can take two Advil and I'm okay. . .  
  
  
  
The steering wheel made an excellent keyboard as she anxiously tapped out her letter of resignation, glancing furtively as the prescription sitting in the passenger's seat. The glare of the pharmacy's lights washed the car in a guilty, desperate light.  
  
I won't do it. I won't go in, I won't get this filled out, I won't take one or maybe two, I won't.  
  
I will aim the car towards the gym and work out all this festering crap on a punching bag, I will be healthy, I will not give Grissom a reason to fire me and leave me.  
  
I won't go in.  
  
  
  
She hunted frantically through the drawer, knee killing her as she knelt on the stiff rug of their bedroom. Where the hell was the bottle? She'd just put it there yesterday, where were the pills? I need it I need it I need it, her brain shouted desperately. Where are they?  
  
"Looking for these?" His tone froze her in place, the chill rushing over her and settling in her bones. "Sara, turn around."  
  
"I was just getting a. . .shirt," she said, whirling around with a handful of material and a mouthful of excuses. "See?" She held it up for him to see.  
  
"Get up," he commanded, cool as a executioner. She obeyed slowly, not meeting his eyes. "I don't know what to say to you right now."  
  
"Then don't say anything."  
  
"Damn it, Sara! You promised me, you fucking promised me you stopped this shit!" At her deer-in-the-headlights look, Grissom continued furiously, "The doctor called, wondered if your back pain," he uttered her excuse with disgust, "was any better with the OxyContin. You wanna call her and tell her why your husband didn't know about any back pain?" The word 'husband' came out like a curse, and she pulled back from the rush of anger.  
  
"I don't believe you," he spat. "My God, how am I supposed to trust you on a case when I can't even trust you on this?"  
  
"Grissom. . ." she trailed. "I love you." The words sounded just as forged as her back pain.  
  
"You love me?" he asked incredulously. "You love me? What about your job, you love that?" At her cautious nod, he continued with, "Apparently not enough. You're suspended."  
  
"What?" Sara exclaimed, knowing that he had good reason, that he really should have fired her a long time ago, and she should feel lucky she was only getting suspended, but the anger and disbelief still bubbled up.  
  
"Suspended."  
  
"But the Gregory case, my Suit case. . ."  
  
"Are no longer your responsibility." He stalked out of the room angrily.  
  
"Grissom, wait!" His hand paused on the knob of the front door. "Where are you going?" she asked, sounding like the paranoid, jaded, lonely wife they'd both seen on TV a thousand times.  
  
Grissom inhaled sharply, but did not turn. "I don't know," he said to the door after a long, painfully silent moment. "I'm not sure when I'm coming back."  
  
As the door closed behind him, Sara slumped to the floor, her back resting against his side of the bed. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she held on to herself tight, bracketing herself against the racking sobs which hit her like a summer thunderstorm. Overwhelming desolation and guilt coursed through her, the emotions as much a part of her as the DNA in her cells. She had known this was going to happen, damn it, she had known and gone ahead with it anyway. She found her mind in the parking lot of that pharmacy, watched herself not go in, wished violently that she had followed her thought of I won't do it.  
  
If Grissom only knew how much she wanted to take it back. . .  
  
TBC 


	10. Chapter 10

[just a quick little note, drunken Grissom, and sorry for not updating sooner. G]  
  
The doorbell's melodious tone echoed through the house, and she rose from the couch to answer it, hoping Eddie and Lindsay were still having a great time at. . .wherever it was they were. She loved her off-weekends, and as much as she loved her daughter, breaks were good.  
  
Catherine opened the door slowly to find Grissom standing on her doorstep, head hanging, a half-pint of vodka in one hand and an orange prescription bottle clutched in the other. "Hi," he stated, not sounding a bit drunk, even though the vodka bottle was half empty. "Can I come in?"  
  
"Of course," she said, taken aback. Catherine moved aside to let him pass through the entryway, as she closed the door, he sighed heavily and dropped his frame onto the couch.  
  
"Where's Lindsay?" Grissom asked, surveying his surroundings with a frown.  
  
"With her rat-bastard father," she answered. "At least he came and got her this time."  
  
He nodded, took another drag from the bottle. His fingers remained firmly clenched around the prescription container, he held it as if he was holding onto the one thing keeping him on the ground.  
  
"What's going on?" she asked. "It's not every day you show up with alcohol and drugs asking to come in."  
  
"What's going on?" he repeated, a wry look coming over him. "What's going on is that I'm old and my younger wife's addicted to painkillers! Nothing terribly special, I just thought I'd share, because I kicked myself out of the apartment two days ago and suspended Sara indefinitely." He smiled a big, sarcastic smile at this. "Oh, I'm just peachy, thanks for asking, and I'm only peachy 'cause of Sara's girly peach shower gel. There's my wife for ya, can't hardly get her in a damn skirt for our wedding but she smells like peaches all damn day, only strong because of her little pills. . ."  
  
Catherine listened to the babble without comment, even when he scowled and looked at the prescription bottle and mumbled, "Fuckers are as evil as Barnes, what they do to her. What they do to me." Glazed blue rocketed up to meet her clear blue eyes. "I almost hit her, almost. Wanted to see the fear in her eyes reflecting what's in mine, wanted her to see what seeing her drugged up does to me, wanted to knock some sense back where I know it's hiding. But I couldn't, it's Sara." He squinted at her. "You won't understand, though, you don't get it. I taught her everything I know but I couldn't teach her to leave, and I don't know when but somehow, maybe Barnes fucked her up, I don't know, but somehow she's lost all her sense and she's not Sara anymore."  
  
He sighed. "I want my Sara back, you know? Wry, crazy Sara. Brilliant, unscarred Sara. Pre-Barnes Sara. Where did she go, huh? Trapped in that Georgian basement with her Pre-Barnes blood, I guess. . .I mean, honestly, Catherine. This," he shook the bottle of pills, "this is why I don't commit, okay? Because I just end up hurting and alone in the end, drunk at my friend's house when all I want is Sara and she's all drugged up so I don't want that but I want . . .her. She gave me a black eye weeks ago but I want her and I think I need her like I never needed anything before and I'm pretty sure I like her and I know I love her."  
  
"Gil. . ."  
  
A drunken finger jabbed in her face. "Don't you 'Gil. . .' me. I want my wife back. I want my life back, okay? Until you can give me that, don't you dare talk to me with that patronizing tone."  
  
She gave him a disbelieving smile. "Look, remember when I said that it takes a bad marriage to recognize a good one? Yours is a good one. Don't screw it up. This is your mess, Grissom, and I'm tired of acting like your mother when it comes to your relationship with Sara. It's your mess. You clean it up."  
  
"I can't!" he exclaimed. "I don't know how!"  
  
Catherine shook her head, chuckling incredulously. "Well, you better figure it out, Grissom."  
  
  
  
  
  
"Hey, Grissom," Nick greeted, stealing a glance behind him to see if Sara was coming in. Not seeing her, he asked, "Where's Sara?"  
  
Grissom froze. "Uh. . ." He couldn't make the words come out, his mind drawing a blank when it came to how to explain Sara's suspension. Nick and Warrick didn't know about the pills, and as far as they knew, her trip to her parent's house was to use up vacation time.  
  
"She's sick," Catherine injected from the door. Grissom turned to her, a brief look of surprise crossing his face.  
  
"Sick?" Warrick asked. "I didn't think Super Sara got sick."  
  
"Well, even angels fall, Warrick," she shrugged. "We'll be shorthanded for a while, okay?"  
  
Catherine started to leave the room, saying, "You boys play nice. I'll be back shortly."  
  
"Wait, wait, wait. Where are you going?" Nicky asked.  
  
"To check up on Sara, see if she needs anything," Catherine explained.  
  
"Why can't Grissom do it?" Warrick inquired, glancing at their frozen supervisor.  
  
Because he can't move, Warrick, she thought. Hello. "Because he has to stay here with you two. Someone's got to work." 


	11. chapter 11

"Come in."  
  
Catherine tried the door, it was unlocked. Sara left the door unlocked? Something must have been really wrong for her to do that. She entered the apartment, Scope rasped out a short bark. "Scopie, quiet," Sara commanded from the couch, her voice raspy.  
  
The apartment was dark except for the pale glow of the television. Sara was lounging lethargically in sweats and a T-shirt, her watchcap pulled tight on her skull, blankets up to her chin. She stared at the TV, not quite seeing the infomercial for a Perfect Steak machine, occasionally taking sips from her can of Coke.  
  
The coffee table was littered in small items, Catherine noted. Sara's gun, disassembled like she had started cleaning it and stopped halfway through. Her pager, batteries removed. Her ID card, turned upside down so her rank and photo were facing the table's surface. Her ring, the small piece of metal the farthest item from her.  
  
Sara looked like hell, and felt like hell, if the disassembled items were any indication.  
  
"How are you doing?" Catherine asked quietly. Sara turned to look at her, eyes red and puffy, face in the I'm-this-close-to-tears stage.  
  
"I'm freezing," she stated simply. It wasn't cold in the apartment at all.  
  
"Why don't you turn up the thermostat?"  
  
Sara rolled her eyes. "If I could, I would. But only Grissom can make the stupid thing work." She turned back to the TV. "There's nothing on at one in the morning."  
  
"Because most people are sleeping, and those who aren't are not watching TV. Why don't you turn it off, do something else?"  
  
Sara laughed. "Like what? Catch up on my reading? I've read everything this house has to offer. Do some chores? The bathroom's never been cleaner, I scoured the kitchen and I brushed the dog. Enough hair to coat ten Chihuahuas. The fridge is stocked. Any other ideas?"  
  
"You could finish cleaning your gun."  
  
The pieces of the weapon were surveyed quickly. "I didn't start cleaning it, I took it apart." Sara reached for her soda, took a sip. "There's a difference."  
  
"Why'd you take it apart?"  
  
"My life's falling apart, I thought I'd start with that." One corner of the brunette's mouth curled up unhappily and she shrugged. "I'm going to have to put it back together before I turn it in. . ."  
  
Catherine's eyebrows knitted together at her statement. "You're quitting?" Quitting was the only time a law enforcement officer, including the crime lab staff, ever turned in the weapon he or she carried.  
  
Sara raised an eyebrow. "It might hurt less than being fired."  
  
"Sara, you are not being fired. You think Grissom would fire you?"  
  
"He left me, didn't he?" Sara felt the tears returning, her eyes grew shiny, and she sniffed. "I never thought he'd leave," she said, voice heavy with pain. "I could've handled the suspension, I could handle being fired, I could handle quitting. And I hate myself for saying that I can't handle Grissom leaving me."  
  
"You love him, you two practically spend every minute together. Of course it hurts." Catherine looked at the younger woman, who was trying her best to manipulate her form into as small a ball as possible to shield herself against the hurt emanating from inside. "But Sara, it's only been three days. He loves you, he's not going to be gone forever. Once he realizes.. ."  
  
"Realizes what?" Sara snapped. "That his wife's addicted to painkillers without a good reason why, that she's untrustworthy, that she can't even run a damn case anymore, that she's a complete failure? I think he already knows."  
  
"You are not a failure, Sara. You made a mistake and you're dealing with it. You're not a failure."  
  
"If I'm not a failure, what am I?"  
  
  
  
Stopped at a red light by a grocery store near their apartment, on his way from work to the hotel where he was staying, Grissom noticed something quite peculiar.  
  
His wife was sitting on the curb, two bags of groceries slumped next to her. She had her left leg extended, her right held close to her body, she was grimacing.  
  
He tried to bring back the numbness to cover the spike of agony he felt at seeing her and rolled down his window. "Hey," he shouted.  
  
Sara looked around, her eyes finally settling on the Tahoe. She looked puzzled, cautious and wary, but said, "Hey yourself."  
  
"What're you doing?" God, he sounded like a little boy, she thought, he sounded so good.  
  
"What does it look like?" she laughed, holding up a bag. "I bought food."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
A series of honks interrupted her response as the light turned green and he didn't move. "Babe, you might wanna come over here if you want to finish this conversation," she shouted.  
  
"Fine," he grumbled, secretly pleased she hadn't told him to leave her alone, ecstatic that she had used the endearment. He pulled into the parking lot, left the Tahoe unlocked and sat down next to her. "So. . ." Grissom started.  
  
"What are you doing down here?" she asked, breathing in deeply, capturing the Grissom scent she'd missed so much.  
  
"Oh, me? I was just. . ." he shrugged. "In the neighborhood."  
  
"Want to give me a ride home, while you're in the neighborhood? My knee's been killing me all day."  
  
Grissom turned to her with concern. "Why didn't you take anything for it?"  
  
"I'm not allowed to go near any painkillers, it's part of my 'recovery plan,'" she said, rolling her eyes. "Because, you know, Advil's so addictive."  
  
"Come on, let's go." He rose, grabbing the two bags. She got up with a slight grimace, hobbling to the SUV.  
  
  
  
"Thanks," she said, leaning against the counter as she watched him put the food away.  
  
"No problem," he said, then gave the room a healthy sniff. "It's clean. Really clean."  
  
"Oh, yeah, I know," she said off-handedly. "I was bored."  
  
"Sare, anyone ever tell you you're obsessive-compulsive?"  
  
"Cleaning does not mean I am obsessive-compulsive, Gris."  
  
He gave her a small smile. "It does when you clean because you're bored."  
  
"No, it doesn't," she protested. "A lot of people clean when they're bored, or when they're procrastinating. And you can just leave me alone, okay? I've been feeding your damn tarantula for a week and a half."  
  
"Thank you," Grissom said, giving her a full-fledged smile. He turned to leave, Sara following him to the front door. "I guess I better go."  
  
She glanced at his left hand, his ring still shining brightly on his finger. "I don't know, Gris," Sara said. "I was under the impression that you were only allowed to go if you took that ring off."  
  
What was she doing, daring him to take it off and make their separation official? Is that what she wanted? The ring was not coming off, even if she did want him to. "I'm not taking it off," he said. "You want me to go so bad, you can take it off yourself. I won't do it."  
  
A smile stretched across her face. "Yeah?" she asked hopefully.  
  
"Yeah," Grissom admitted, moving quickly to change places with her, pinning her against the door. "I'm tired of my hotel room, I'm tired of hotel food, I'm tired of sleeping alone," he whispered, staring into her half- lidded eyes. "I'm tired of not seeing you every morning before I go to sleep, I'm tired of you not being the first thing I see when I wake up, I'm tired of not seeing you running a case, I'm tired of not chasing theories with you, I'm tired of not being with you."  
  
Their lips met, slow and sweet, spending a good five minutes reacquainting themselves with each other. "So this is what it's like to kiss you," she said, arms around his neck, his around her waist. "I forgot."  
  
"Let me remind you again," he said, and did just that.  
  
  
  
"Oh, by the way, you're not suspended anymore," Grissom told her, Sara merely grunted her approval, and burrowed closer to him, placing a light kiss on his collarbone. It felt so good to have him back, so good to have those arms holding her, so good just to lie here in bed and not expect anything but a perfect night's sleep. It was true, you don't know what you have until it's gone, she couldn't believe it had taken her this long to figure that out.  
  
"Grissom?" He made a questioning mumble, growing tired himself. "I love you. I mean it."  
  
"Love you so much," he whispered. "More than all the insects on the world and more than all the people on the planet combined. More than all the money being gambled as we speak, more than the rate at which rabbits multiply, more than all the people getting married by Elvis in a drive-thru chapel. More than all the grains of sand in all the deserts and beaches of the world. More than all the hurt anyone could ever cause, more than all the strands of DNA in CODIS, more than all the fingerprints in AFIS. More than anything."  
  
"I'm sorry about everything."  
  
"Me, too."  
  
"We'll be fine, though." He could hear the tinge of doubt in her voice.  
  
"Yes, we will." 


	12. chapter 12

She strode into the lab like a queen returning to her kingdom. It was hers again, and the missing piece of the puzzle that had started repairing itself the night Grissom came back slid into place. She couldn't wait to do something, anything, even if it was as boring as matching prints or waiting for the GC/mass-spec to warm up so she could analyze a dirt sample. Like a dog reentering its territory, she made the rounds through the maze of halls and labs to check up on everything. There was Greg, Archie, David. Mandy and the receptionist she didn't remember the name of, there was Bobby G. She felt better than giddy at finally being home again.  
  
Beaming, Sara walked into the break room, feeling like she was about to start flying. How had she ever needed Oxy when she had this place? "Hey, Warrick!" she said cheerfully, and he turned with a grin.  
  
"Hey, Sara. How you feelin'?" he asked, her euphoria diffusing into him.  
  
"So, so good," she replied. "Never better."  
  
"So the suspension didn't kick your ass too much?" Warrick whispered. "Cath told us you were sick, but. . .there's no way."  
  
"Yeah, I don't get sick," she boasted. "And now my house is too clean to have any germs. . ." Sara's smile shrunk as she got more serious. "But, no, the suspension didn't kick my ass. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?"  
  
"So they say. . .We missed you."  
  
"Thanks," she said, her smile returning. "I missed you guys, too. Any progress on the Gregory case?"  
  
Warrick shook his head. "Nothing. Grissom's having a huge problem with it because of the whole crime scene suit thing not leaving us any evidence, so it's gone cold."  
  
"Same with the first two," Sara shrugged. "Hasn't anyone checked up on the owners of the suits?"  
  
"We would've, but Nick and Catherine were out three days last week testifying, and Grissom and I were trying to juggle three new cases, as well as the Gregory case when we had time."  
  
"I can start making phone calls if you two are done with your cases. . ."  
  
"Oh, we're beyond finished. Trick roll, robbery, and a minor assault. Easier than pie."  
  
"You solved a trick roll? How long?"  
  
"Three hours. Hooker stayed in the room next door the entire time we were there."  
  
"Nice," Sara complimented. "I love stupid people."  
  
"Me, too. Makes work so easy. . .You're going to go make phone calls?"  
  
"No, you're not," Grissom interrupted from the door. "Lockwood called, they found another body. . .same footprints, different method. We have to go now."  
  
"Wait, what about Catherine and Nick?" Sara asked. "What'll they do?"  
  
"The judge called them back for clarification, they're not coming in tonight."  
  
"Let's roll," Warrick said, grabbing his jacket.  
  
  
  
"Ooh, skeleton!" Sara exclaimed, blowing into the latex gloves to inflate the fingers before putting them on. "Been a while since I've had one of these."  
  
"Careful," Grissom said. "HazMat says there's lye all over the body."  
  
"Lye? Is Ben Weston in the same prison as Barnes?" she smiled. "I'll give Barnes that, he's not terribly original. Two gunshots, a beating, and lye? What's next, making the victim kill himself by jumping in a compactor?"  
  
"Sara." Grissom gave her an eyebrow. The hills surrounding them didn't reach up to the night sky nearly as well as his eyebrows seemed to.  
  
"Sorry, I'm nervous," she justified. "I hate this. First night back and it's Barnes. Give me a break."  
  
Warrick started taking photos while Grissom hunted for trace, calmly desperate for something the killer left behind, but he only found white fibers he was sure matched the samples of the suit they had in the lab. He followed the footprints left by the suit to a gravel road, and sighed. No chance of tire treads, not even a chance to see how heavy the vehicle was. Grissom bagged a sample to bring back to the lab, maybe something wouldn't match what was supposed to be here.  
  
Sara was still scanning the skeleton with her flashlight when he returned, each bone scrutinized for any evidence. "Nothing," she said, when she heard him approach. "But no message either." The brunette straightened and turned to ask, "If this is truly one of ours, why isn't there a message?"  
  
"And what is she supposed to represent?" he asked. "The first two were a married couple, supposed to be us. The third was a little boy, our son. This woman. . ."  
  
"Sure it's a female?" she asked, a small grin beginning to appear on her face.  
  
"Well, yes," he said matter-of-fact. "Look at the pelvis, it's wide, female. The bone structure's fine, not like a man."  
  
"Why don't you take a closer look, Grissom? Because unless I'm wrong, which isn't often, it's a man."  
  
"Sara, you're wrong, it's a female. Bones can't lie." He hated that smug look.  
  
"They may not lie, but they can be altered," Sara explained. "You taught me that. And I've been down here with the body longer than you have. The pelvis, Mr. It-has-to-be-female, is broken, moved. It only looks female from up there because whoever doused it in lye glued the bones to look that way. And the bone structure? It's fine alright, because someone stripped off a few layers. Your female is all man."  
  
Grissom squinted at the bones, pointing his flashlight at the pelvis with disbelief. "I've never seen anyone do that before. . ."  
  
"First time for everything." Sara shrugged. "I think the killer covered him in lye, then washed him, albeit not well, and stripped the bones. Oh, I called Teri Miller when I found the bone thing. She might be able to tell us if there's something still scratched under the stuff that's been taken off. I'm hoping she's got some kind of ESDA machine for bones."  
  
"Did you have to call her?" Grissom had a whiny look on his face to match his tone. "Why can't Doc Robbins try?"  
  
He was so cute when he was whiny. . .and irritating. "Grissom, just because she deserted you at a restaurant a million years ago doesn't mean she can't help us."  
  
"I'm not worried about working with her, I'm worried about our budget," he lied. "If we have to pay to fly her in from. . .where is she now? Canada?" Sara nodded. "If we have to fly her in from Canada, and pay for her hotel room and her ticket back, we can't get new equipment until July. And not this July, July in two years."  
  
"She said she'd pay her own way. . ." This did nothing to get rid of the distressed look on his face, which confirmed her beliefs. "I'm not going to have a reason to be jealous, am I?"  
  
"No! Of course not!" He looked offended that she had to ask. "No, she's part of my past, you are my right now and my future."  
  
Oh, what a nice, cliched thing to say, she thought as she felt herself melting. "So, what's the deal? She's paying to come out here to help us, she means-nothing?-nothing to you, she's been very helpful in the past, so what's the deal?"  
  
Grissom looked more and more dismayed as his excuses melted away like tissue under lye. "I don't know," he said finally. "I just. . ."  
  
"Are still upset she ditched you." Sara grinned. "It's okay, Grissom, but it was a long time ago. You have to get over it."  
  
"Fine," he sighed, sounding like he was being forced to take medicine. "We'll let her help. But for the record, I don't like it."  
  
  
  
"Teri!" Sara called, the blond turned from her inspection of the lobby clock and walked to her. "Thanks for coming."  
  
"No problem," Teri said, looking around. "Where's the boss?"  
  
Sara shrugged. "He'll show up, he always does. Want to take a look at the body?"  
  
The anthropologist soon found herself in the morgue, looking over the remains, as an enthusiastic criminalist hovered behind her. "This is pretty unique," she told Sara. "The stripping reminds me of how animals clean bones, it's so thorough. . .The lye helped that, of course."  
  
"What's the weapon?" Teri winced, wondering if the brunette hadn't had one cup of coffee too many.  
  
"Difficult to say, a knife maybe." She leaned closer with a magnifier. "Whoever did it has a lot of skill, though. There aren't any jagged marks on here at all. Very smooth."  
  
"Sandpaper!" Sara exclaimed, the Eureka! in her tone. "Would a sanding machine do that kind of damage?"  
  
"It's certainly possible.You'd have to run some tests."  
  
"Oh, Grissom's never going to believe this!"  
  
"I'm never going to believe what?"  
  
Sara whirled around happily to face him. "Sandpaper," she repeated, a huge smile on her face. "The bones. . .I think they might have been sanded down."  
  
Grissom looked surprised. "Never would've thought of that. Hi, Teri."  
  
"Gil," the blond greeted. "Like I told Sara, you're going to have to run some tests, but the sanding sounds plausible. And she's right, it's a man."  
  
"I'm going to go buy some beef bones and see if Detail will let us borrow their sander," Sara said. "I wasn't going say I told you so, but. . .I told you so."  
  
"You're going to buy beef bones?" he asked incredulously.  
  
"Well, yeah," she said.  
  
"You?"  
  
"Me," she confirmed. "It's okay. We can give them to Scope when I'm done."  
  
"You sure you'll be okay? Because if I get a call from the butcher. . ."  
  
Teri watched the exchange with confusion. Why was he having issues with Sara buying bones, and who or what was Scope? "Why won't Sara be okay with buying bones?" she asked.  
  
"I'm a vegetarian," Sara explained. "And Gris here's afraid I'm going to lose my lunch in the store. But it's not like a cow bone's that different from a human bone covered in muscle."  
  
"You can't handle hamburger!" Grissom exclaimed. "What's the difference?"  
  
"Um, bones are bones, not covered in maggots, for starters," Sara began. "And humans aren't, generally speaking, ground up when I see them, unlike, say, a hamburger." She gave him a smile and a wink. "Besides, that one time when I wouldn't clean up your experiment.. .that wasn't really about the meat."  
  
"I knew that," he sniped. "The Leave of Absence form was plenty clear."  
  
"If it was plenty clear, why didn't you get why I was leaving? And why didn't you sign it?"  
  
"I was in denial, okay? Besides, you told me to throw it away!"  
  
"Pop quiz, Grissom: What's your heart rate?" Sara teased. "Because if it's over 70, you could always take a walk."  
  
He glared at her. "Sare, go buy the bones. Go."  
  
"Trying to get rid of me?"  
  
"If you don't go right now. . ." he warned, she grinned impishly at him and took off. Grissom sighed, shaking his head as he turned back to Teri. "The things I put up with. . ."  
  
"Who's Scope?" Teri asked.  
  
"She's our dog."  
  
Oh. " 'Our' as in you and Sara?" He nodded. "I never pegged you as a dog person," she said, turning back to the bones.  
  
"I'm not really. But Sara.has a way to make you enthusiastic about almost anything. Except tofu. She can't convince me how it's good for you." He shrugged. "People change."  
  
I'll say. "How long have the two of you."  
  
"Awhile. Married almost three years."  
  
"You married her!" she squeaked, nearly falling face first into the body.  
  
He chuckled. "Yeah, that's what everyone else said."  
  
Holy crap. . .she forced herself to breath. "I wouldn't have pegged you as a. . .husband," Teri choked. This was Gil Grissom, the man who couldn't be bothered to turn off his phone on a date just in case there was a murder. She couldn't even imagine being married to him.  
  
"Me, neither. But it was Sara. . ." He shrugged. "How could I not?"  
  
How could he not? How could he? Sara, from what she had seen, was exactly like him, only more eager about. . .everything. Well, Teri thought, I guess it would work. She picked up a rib, scanning it closely.  
  
There was a small fish etched into the bone, dead center. "What the hell?"  
  
Grissom looked at the bone she had just handed him. "That's a new way of saying it," he commented.  
  
"Saying what?"  
  
"This is the fish," Grissom explained, gesturing at the image. She looked at him like he was speaking gibberish. "Sara didn't tell you, did she?" he asked, seeing the confusion on her face.  
  
The blond shook her head, said, "Why don't you explain it to me while I check the rest of these ribs?" 


	13. chapter 13

"Is the butcher selling dinosaur now?" Grissom asked as he entered the room. The bone Sara had in front of her was huge, bigger than any beef bone he'd ever seen.  
  
"It's bison, actually," Sara said, not looking up. "I'm waiting for the lye to do its thing so I can start sanding."  
  
"Bison?"  
  
"Uh, yeah, it's a specialty store. They sell venison, bison, ostrich. All farm-raised. The guy who runs it went to college with me, makes the best jerky in the country. I miss that stuff. . ." Sara sighed. "Anyway, I wanted something big enough to work with, but still like a beef bone, Justin gave me two. One's in the lye bath," she gestured to the one in front of her, "and one's in the fridge. . .I'm going to clean it with a knife, see if that makes a difference in the sanding patterns. Where's Teri?"  
  
"Oh, she's on lunch break."  
  
"The two of you find anything?"  
  
"Yeah, fish."  
  
"Really?" she asked, looking up at him. "What kind?"  
  
"Take your pick." He handed her Polaroids of the carvings. "Angelfish, goldfish, I think there might be a jellyfish in there, too."  
  
Sara looked at the pictures with interest. "I'm retracting my 'Barnes isn't original' statement. . . wow."  
  
"You might to figure out what carving tool was used to do those," he suggested. Sara, completely engrossed in the images, nodded.  
  
"Does Teri know what this is all about?"  
  
"I explained to her that the fish are a message between us and the killer, but not much more. She didn't quite get it."  
  
"Yeah, I don't really get it either. Oh, Greggo has your trace results. . ." she said absently.  
  
His forehead furrowed. "Why did Greg tell you?" Grissom asked, his budding anger spilling over into a cautious tone.  
  
She grinned at him. "No need to get all Alpha Male on him, Gris. I asked him if the results were back."  
  
"Don't care. They're my results, I want to know first."  
  
"Control freak," she teased.  
  
"Protocol. Not something you have a lot of use for. . ." he taunted.  
  
Sara's eyebrows narrowed, her face growing stony. "That's a low blow, Grissom."  
  
Oh, God. She thought this was about the pills. . . "Sara, I was talking about us." This didn't appease her. "I mean, it's not exactly like we're obeying protocol here. . ." She tilted her head, crossed her arms, her expression saying, You're just digging yourself deeper, buddy.  
  
"Before we were married," he rushed. "Supervisor-subordinate relationships are frowned on, anywhere."  
  
"Grissom, I think maybe you should go before you get buried in that pit you've dug yourself." She smiled, winking at him.  
  
"Fine, I know when I'm not wanted. . ." he sighed.  
  
"Oh, I want you, just not right now. . ." His eyebrows raised at that. "Go," she encouraged. "Let me sand."  
  
  
  
"Hell is that?"  
  
Sara and Warrick looked up from the white bone, plastic safety glasses and coveralls making them look like insects, a sharp contrast from Nick's impeccable suit. "Still in court, Nick?" Warrick asked.  
  
The Texan shrugged. "Man, I don't testify for months, and now it's like all my cases are being called in. We're on a lunch break." Nick looked at the bone with curiosity. "What'd you kill to get that?"  
  
"Buffalo," Sara said, picking up the sander. "Just have to sand it. . ."  
  
Nick sent Warrick a 'What the hell is she talking about?' look, which was answered with a 'I'll tell you later' shrug. "Sanding a bone's making you work a double?"  
  
"Well, yeah," Sara said, nodding. "I couldn't leave it until next shift because I didn't want the lye to eat away too much of it."  
  
"Lye, right." Nick looked perplexed.  
  
The sander made a noise similar to a dentist's drill as Sara hit the power switch. She looked at Nick and his perfect suit and said, "Crimestopper, you and your suit might wanna take a few steps back. . .this is going to be messy, and I don't know how far it'll splatter."  
  
"You mean you haven't researched it?" he teased as he stepped back a few feet.  
  
"Yeah, I take power tools to animal bones on my days off," she scoffed. "Of course I haven't researched it."  
  
She turned back to the bone, a gleeful look coming over her as she put the tool to the bone and started working. Powdery bits of bone rushed off as she ran the machine from left to right. "Oh, this is fun," she crowed over the high pitched whine.  
  
Warrick mouthed 'Serial killer' and pointed at Sara. Nick nodded in agreement. Sara, catching the exchange, grumbled, "Science nerd, not serial killer."  
  
A few minutes later, the bone was shaped identically to the bones they had found. Taking a magnifying glass, Sara examined the marks made by the sanding.identical. "Nice," she said. "Bones were sanded. I'll tell Grissom." She raised a cautionary finger at the two men. "Throw that away and I'll hurt you."  
  
  
  
"I was just about to ask how it was going," Grissom said. "They were sanded?"  
  
She gave him a smile. "The buffalo bone is just as smooth as the others. I don't know if our bones were sanded by hand or by machine, but I'm hoping it was by machine. . .Dust everywhere. If our killer did it in a room with wooden floors, we can probably get evidence."  
  
"No DNA," he reminded.  
  
"You never know," she disagreed. "Sometimes."  
  
"This guy's pretty smart. Chances are that he hasn't left anything behind."  
  
"You're such a pessimist," she drawled. "People make mistakes. No one's intelligent enough to think of everything."  
  
"What about me?" Grissom leaned back in his chair, taking off his glasses. "If I committed a crime, would anyone who works in this building be able to solve it?"  
  
Sara pondered this for a moment, then a smile quirked on her face and she answered, "Well, Day Shift probably couldn't. . .but our shift? We'd have you in no time."  
  
"Why?" Sara wasn't sure was he was getting at, what exactly the riddle was, but it wasn't hurting her any to play along.  
  
"Because you trained us, and Graveyard has me," she shrugged. "Catherine may be your best friend, and Warrick and Nicky are practically family, but I live with you. It would be beyond easy to solve a case where the killer has trained the investigator. . .especially when the investigator is running on the same wavelength as the killer."  
  
"But wouldn't knowing the way I work be a hindrance? How does my training you make it easy?"  
  
Her forehead wrinkled, she was confused. "Why wouldn't it make it easier?"  
  
"If I trained you, I'd know exactly what you were looking for, making it easier for me to alter the evidence. If you're not looking for it. . ."  
  
"You aren't going to see it," she realized. "What do you know that I don't?"  
  
"Nothing more, I just think we've been focusing too much on Barnes. What if he has nothing to do with it?"  
  
She looked at him, astonished. "Are you serious? He was on the tape, the Gregory murder was identical to his others. He knows what 'This is the fish' means."  
  
"We think he knows. He wouldn't ever tell us, remember?"  
  
"Grissom! He's a son of a bitch who gets off on mind games. Of course he wasn't going to tell us."  
  
"What if he doesn't know? We can't find any way that he's communicating with anyone on the outside. No letters, no phone calls."  
  
"He could've slipped a note into another inmate's mail," she suggested, and he could see she wasn't going to let this go any easier than an animal with a death-grip on prey's neck. "He was on the tape. Why would anyone put him on the tape if he wasn't supposed to know that something happened? It was a conformation."  
  
"Exactly! His name was on the tape, but I don't think he has anything to do with it."  
  
"But it was the girl he killed before he attacked me!" Sara's frustration was growing.  
  
"I was wrong about the tape, Sara." Her eyes grew wide at the admission.  
  
"You were wrong?"  
  
"Yeah. The woman wasn't the one he killed, it was probably recorded more recently than we thought."  
  
"Are you firing Archie?" Some criminalists fired employees who made mistakes, especially of this magnitude.  
  
"Archie didn't run the tape, I did, so no. I wouldn't fire him anyway."  
  
"So what are you doing about the woman on the tape?  
  
"Nothing. I don't think she's important." He put his glasses back on. "Sara, why would anyone want Barnes involved in the first place?"  
  
"Revenge," she replied automatically. Grissom shot her a look that suggested that she take the time to think about it. "I don't know," she sighed, frustrated. "Somebody knew that I was involved, or wanted to make sure I was involved. . .so. . .they plant a tape that has nothing to do with the case except for the 'Fish' thing, but mentions Barnes, knowing that that would get me on the case if I wasn't already."  
  
"Good. More," he requested.  
  
"We have a skeleton, which would make us call in Teri Miller, although I have no idea what her role is, and the other three vics are set up as players in some macabre episode of 'The Grissoms'. . .you, me, and a son we don't even have. Someone trying to break me by killing a hypothetical Grissom family and bringing in your ex-girlfriend?"  
  
"We never went out more than once, so technically. . ."  
  
"Whatever. Or maybe. . ." Her face curled in concentration. "Maybe it's not me, it's you."  
  
"Me?" Grissom looked surprised. He hadn't thought of that. "Why me?"  
  
"Okay, hear me out before you say anything," she said, sitting down. "The first vic was a woman. . .me. So, what would upset you more than losing me, right? And the next vic's the husband, looks like a suicide. A course of action, perhaps? You watch me die, then take your own life. And bringing Barnes into the picture again. . .designed to make you furious. Here's the guy who nearly killed your wife, back again, threatening her." Sara got progressively more excited as she figured it out. "Our killer isn't after me at all, he's after you and Barnes. Maybe Barnes would get a harsher sentence, or be killed or something. And you, the killer's torturing you. . .the crime scene suit makes it impossible to get any evidence, a kid is killed, someone you had intentions for comes back to remind you of what you could've had-"  
  
"I'm more than happy without Teri, thank you," he interrupted.  
  
"But he also wants you to be appropriately challenged," Sara jumped in, ignoring his interruption. "Giving you tough cases, making you work at whatever this fish thing means. . .he wants you to suffer but he wants you to have a good time while you're doing it."  
  
"That's crazy!" Why hadn't he thought of that? The student had just about made the transformation to teacher, he remembered.  
  
"Who isn't?" She gave him a small smile. "I mean, there's crazy-sane and crazy-insane, and our guy's definitely the latter." Sara's brown eyes wandered around the room, finally landing on 'The Entomological Handbook.' "Pretty smart guy actually."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Well, I probably wouldn't go this far if I was scheming. This guy's thought of everything."  
  
  
  
"Enemies?" Gary Barnes asked with a chuckle, his voice distorted through the speaker. "Of course I have enemies. I'm in prison."  
  
Sara shifted the plastic telephone from her left ear to her right. This is way too much like those phones I made out of cans when I was a kid, she thought as she stared down Barnes through the Plexiglas screen. "Come on, Gary. You know of anyone on the outside who would do this?" she asked, pressing a photograph of Sean Gregory's body against the glass. "Maybe to get back at you?"  
  
Barnes stared at the photo for a long time, licked his lips. "No," he said, distracted by the grisly image. "That's incredible," he added huskily, reaching out a hand to trace the boy's outline. Sara pulled the picture away, shaking her head, and Barnes frowned, licked his lips again. "I was just looking," he grumbled.  
  
"You weren't looking, you were salivating," Sara snapped. "And I didn't ask for a DNA sample."  
  
"Self-righteous little-" Barnes wisely cut himself off at the sight of her rising eyebrow. "I'm done. I don't know anything." He gave her a final glare before he hung up the phone. 


	14. chapter 14

The cleanliness of the apartment went unnoticed as she stumbled through the door, worn out from working for almost thirty-six hours and weary from her interview with Barnes. The smell of almonds wafted through the air, and she thought, Cyanide smells like almonds. A yawn stretched her mouth wide, and she chucked her keys and jacket onto the table by the door with her eyes still closed.  
  
Sara decided, as she walked to the bedroom, that she wasn't going to bother changing her clothes, she was too tired. She nearly collapsed on the bed, smelling like prison and bones, not even aware that someone had changed the sheets.  
  
"I made muffins." Grissom's voice rumbled through her ears, and she forced one eyelid up to look at him. "Almond-apricot."  
  
Sara whined softly, "I love apricots." Her head fell back against the pillow. "But I'm too tired."  
  
"They'll be there when you wake up," he assured her. "Sleep."  
  
"Joining me?" she asked through a yawn.  
  
Grissom pulled the blankets over her, running a hand over her hair, and replied, "You just talked to Barnes. Last time we were in the same bed together after you went near him, I got a black eye. So I'm sending myself to the couch."  
  
She winced. "Sorry about that."  
  
"It's okay. Besides, I don't really care for Eau de Prison." "Don't smell that bad. . ." Sara yawned again, and sniffed. "More like bone than prison."  
  
"Okay, Eau de Bone." He watched her yawn again, then she was out like a light. Grissom sighed. "What am I going to do with you, sweetheart? You're going to work yourself to death on this case, you didn't need another reason to be involved," he whispered to her still form.  
  
  
  
He was awakened by the sound of the door opening and dog tags jangling over to jump on the couch. "Scopie!" Sara scolded quietly. "Get off, you'll wake him up."  
  
"Too late," Grissom said, and the dog wriggled over to lick his face. He pushed her off gently, asking his wife, "How long have you been up?"  
  
"Hour, hour and a half," she shrugged, peering into the fridge. "Where'd you put the muffins?"  
  
"Counter."  
  
She rustled through the various items on the counter, mail, crime scene photos, some food. "Found 'em."  
  
A few seconds later, the microwave beeped, and he was forced to share the couch with a bouncy brunette and a warm muffin. "Want some?" she asked, holding out a piece.  
  
"Made them for you, so go ahead." Grissom watched as she fed it to the dog. "Sara, I thought we agreed we wouldn't feed her human food."  
  
She grinned at him. "You're so. . .strict," she mock-complained.  
  
"You're so. . .awake," he riposted. "Have you had coffee yet?"  
  
Sara shook her head slowly, her grin growing.  
  
"Hmm," he thought aloud as she slid down to lie next to him. "No coffee. That's your first bit of food today, right?" She nodded. "I'd say endorphins, from the exercise, but you're more hyper than usual. I don't know, Sidle. Why are you so awake?"  
  
Sara shrugged, leaned up and kissed him. "If I knew, I'd tell you."  
  
He picked off stray hairs from her clothing as they laid on the couch, the grooming ritual was too much like what a monkey would do and she started laughing. "What?"  
  
"Nothing, it's just . . .You're acting like you have to pick insects off of me like I'm a chimpanzee or something."  
  
"Well, you are acting like one today."  
  
"Just remember, before you call me a primate again, that chimps throw their. . . excrement when they get angry or territorial."  
  
"I'll keep that in mind." Grissom looked at his wife, taking in every detail: milk chocolate eyes hiding behind her lids, the hair she kept saying she had to get cut was strewn across her face and the couch, a much faded S-shaped scar on her left cheek, her Glock 9mm pistol-why was she wearing her gun?-that she wanted to trade for a H&K because the Koch handguns were tougher to handle, those red jeans he wasn't sure why she had, and. . . wait a minute. . . "Is that my shirt?" he asked, fingering the hem of the white shirt she was wearing.  
  
"Got a problem with it?" Sara challenged.  
  
"Oh, no. I think it looks better on you that it ever would on me. And you know every man alive likes to see his girl wearing an item of his clothes."  
  
"I'm not your girl," she corrected automatically.  
  
"Oh, right," he said. "You have to remember I'm just a caveman, and that occasionally I think everything is mine."  
  
"Sorry," she answered, the lilt in her voice added to the joke. "I forgot I'm supposed to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen baking a pie. Oh, wait, I am barefoot."  
  
"Woman, what are you doing relaxin' on the couch?" he mock-roared. "Git in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!"  
  
Sara laughed, patted him on the shoulder. "If you want a sandwich, Caveman, you can go make your own. . .but I should warn you, I don't think we have any bread."  
  
A fake glare crossed his face. "So, I can't have a sandwich. . .what're you gonna cook?"  
  
She licked her lips. "Grissom, there's a reason you're in charge of meals around here. . .we don't want to pay for a stomach pump every time I go into the kitchen, do we?"  
  
She found herself caught up in a lingering kiss. "Not a chance," Grissom said. "I'll stick to the cooking, you can stick to thinking about what you're going to do on your night off."  
  
Yesterday's prison trip faded as she asked excitedly, "I get the night off?"  
  
Grissom nodded. "If I see you anywhere near the lab or this case, there will be repercussions. I don't want you to work thirty-six hour shifts, because that just leads to burnout, which leads to pills, which leads to. . ."  
  
"Yeah, I got it," Sara said, cutting him off. "But I can't promise to stay away from researching the Fish thing, okay?"  
  
"Research only," he conceded. "I know you don't like being told what to do, but I'm just trying to prevent. . .things. . .from happening again."  
  
  
  
"This is the fish" was entered into the search window at Google a few hours later, and Sara sat back to watch the results come up. Grissom had left almost an hour ago, Scope sleeping in her crate in the back of his Tahoe-a rare but highly prized excursion into work-and their departure had left her alone in the apartment, staring at the computer screen, the stereo playing lightly in the background.  
  
She frowned as the results came back.  
  
"This is the Fish and Game department of Southern Colorado. . ." "Now, this is the fish most commonly found at state fairs. . ." "I spent nearly a thousand dollars on this fish. . ."  
  
Sara groaned. So much for that. . .  
  
She typed "thisisthefish.com" into the location window and hit enter. A "cannot find server" message popped up. "It was a long shot anyway," Sara said out loud, trying to cover the disappointment that this too had failed.  
  
Her fingers tapped absently on the keyboard, not applying enough pressure to make the keys depress, but enough to create the auditory illusion of work. The glaring white screen and the message "This page cannot be displayed" offered no help and no clues, and the music was doing nothing but distracting her. Sara got up and shut the stereo off, cutting off the Chili Peppers' "Rollercoaster."  
  
She wandered through the apartment, treading in a seemingly endless circle, from the living room to the kitchen down the hall to their 'office' and through the bedroom, past the bathroom, back down the hall to the living room. Pacing didn't help, even as she ran the case through her head, every bit of evidence passing by her thoughts. She trailed her fingertips over the spines of nearly a hundred books, forensics and entomological, her unfinished thesis from graduate school, Shakespeare and books of poetry, a condensed version of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language and a dictionary of quotations, but the infinite wisdom and knowledge held in the pages didn't speak to her.  
  
She was trapped in frustration.  
  
Sara reached for the phone. 


	15. chapter 15

"What part of 'night off' do you not understand, Sara?"  
  
A rush of static huffed across the line as she exhaled angrily. "Grissom, you know why I didn't take any nights off the first year and a half I was in Las Vegas? You know why I've taken, I don't know, three personal and sick days combined in my entire working life?"  
  
"Because you're a workaholic." He could see the glare and the arched eyebrow, those brown eyes rolling.  
  
"No, because I get bored. And because I can't stand leaving cases hanging."  
  
"Because you're a workaholic." The repetition was simply stated, like he presented evidence to a suspect or the DA, his quiet confidence was hard to break.  
  
"I need something to do, okay?" she said, sounding far more desperate than she wanted to. "I won't even come into the lab."  
  
"It's your night off, Sara. Enjoy it." It sounded like he was about to hang up, so she called, "Wait!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"No one's called the owners of those crime scene suits, have they?"  
  
"No."  
  
"I can do it. I'm going to, considering someone should have done it three months ago."  
  
"Sara, not one of those owners will appreciate being woken up at. . .two- thirty in the morning."  
  
"They're all in law enforcement," she pointed out, her voice raising as her eagerness grew, the prospect of something to do raising her spirits. "And anyone who has one and isn't in law enforcement is a suspect and deserves to be woken up at two-thirty in the morning."  
  
"No one deserves to be woken up at two-thirty, suspects or not."  
  
"But. . ." Grissom suddenly had an image of Sara as a child, pouting and whining, "But I wanna!" in the irritating tone only young children have. "Grissom. . ."  
  
"I'm not giving you the list. How's your research coming?"  
  
"Like crap. . .why do you think I called?" Definitely whiny. He sighed.  
  
"Okay. . ." Catherine strolled by his office, grinning to herself as she looked in at the beleaguered face of a new and misinformed owner trying to figure out how to entertain his Border Collie. Good luck, she thought, continuing down the hall.  
  
"And don't you dare try to give me chores to do. Dishes are your responsibility today, and laundry's not until tomorrow."  
  
"You could do it early." Grissom winced at the harsh laugh that followed his suggestion.  
  
"Right, and mess up the whole system? If I do laundry today, then we'll have to do it early next week, and the week after, and the week after that. . ."  
  
"I know how a weekly system works, thank you."  
  
"I'm not doing laundry," she emphasized. "I wanna work."  
  
He shook his head firmly, ignoring the fact that there was no way she could see the action. "Oh, no. The whole point of a night off is to not work."  
  
"Grissom, remember what happened the last time I went a long time without working?"  
  
"I believe you called Catherine a bitch and flung your hand of cards into her face."  
  
"See? I have to work."  
  
"And I believe that at the time you were under quite a lot of emotional stress and on pain killers that, as you put it, gave you mood swings. I'm not entirely sure that your outburst had anything to do with not working."  
  
"I hate you," she whimpered. "Why are you so tricky?"  
  
"Practice," he answered glibly. "You do realize that your need to work is a little pathetic?"  
  
"Shut up. When was the last time you took a night off?"  
  
"A couple of months ago when you were at your parent's place."  
  
"That doesn't count, I was there. Your last alone night off."  
  
Grissom sighed. "I don't know."  
  
Sara laughed. "Ha! I knew it," she crowed. "No one's perfect. Not even you, Mr. I-married-a-workaholic-and-oops-I'm-worse-than-she-is."  
  
Warrick stopped in the door of the office, holding up his wrist and tapped his watch, mouthing "Break?" Grissom nodded, held up his index finger to the waiting CSI, and told his wife, "You're much worse than I am, but we can fight about this later. Can you just, I don't know, take a nap or read a book or something? I'll be home in a couple of hours. . .Yes, I'll grab something for breakfast. . .okay. Me, too. Bye."  
  
He shook his head again as he hung up, sighed, looking at Warrick. "My wife is insane."  
  
"She doesn't let up," Warrick agreed. "Your children are going to have more drive than either of you can handle."  
  
"Why does everyone assume we're going to have kids?" Grissom asked seriously, giving the younger man an inquisitive look. "Seriously, do we look like parents or what?"  
  
"I. . .I don't know, Gris. Maybe because you two are so similar that a child would be kind of scary, or because you're married and married people have kids. . ."  
  
"Sara doesn't like kids, and to be honest, I'm afraid of them. No kids." They walked together down the halls, wandering past lab techs busy at a dozen different cases. "And I don't think we need to contribute to over- population."  
  
"So, by not having children, you're. . .what? Doing your civic duty?"  
  
Grissom chuckled. "Sara would like that."  
  
"Sara would like what?" Nick asked as the two men entered the break room.  
  
"To work," Catherine guessed with a smile. "I'm assuming that was her on the phone?"  
  
Grissom nodded. "If she calls you, do not give her the list of owners of the suits," he warned each member of the team. "Or you too can take a mandatory couple of nights off. Complete with a write-up in your personnel file." He raised a cautionary eyebrow. "Everybody clear?"  
  
"Clear," they all mumbled.  
  
"You know, this is kind of harsh, Gil," Catherine said. "She just wants this case solved."  
  
The entomologist gave her a half-smile. "I know, I don't want her to burn herself out on this thing. And for every thirty-six hours a team member works straight, that member gets a night off."  
  
Nick looked at his watch. "So. . .I've got twenty-seven hours left. Better get to work." He rose from his chair, gave the room a grin, and said, "I'll be with Brass, hunting down those credit card receipts for that sanding machine Sara claims those bones were sanded with."  
  
"Okay, Nicky," Grissom said. "Everyone knows what they need to be doing?" The two others nodded. "Then get going."  
  
  
  
"Thank you for your cooperation," she was saying when he let himself and the dog in that morning. "If I have any more questions, can I call? Thanks."  
  
"I thought I told you not to make those calls, Sara."  
  
"Hello to you too, Gris," she smiled. "I just busted the case wide open."  
  
"Who'd you get that list from?" he demanded, glaring pointedly at a handwritten list of names and numbers. "Did you bribe Greg?"  
  
She snorted. "I just did some research, like you said I could, boss."  
  
"You called the company again?"  
  
Sara nodded. "Don't be so disappointed. I'm not your slave, I don't have to follow every order. You do want to know what I found out, don't you?"  
  
Grissom shifted his glare from the paper to her face. "Yes."  
  
"Well, for starters, most of the suits are owned by police departments, crime labs, the usual. There were three anomalous purchases, so. . .I checked those out before I called the labs."  
  
He sat down next to her, the cushions on the couch squeaking. "And?"  
  
"And, one was a writer, doing research for a forensics novel. He's clean. No clue who Gary Barnes is."  
  
"He's not lying?"  
  
She gave him a sideways glance. "Is there anyone in the state who doesn't know who Gary Barnes is? He's Nevada's own Ted Bundy."  
  
"And that's proof that the guy's not lying. . .how, exactly?"  
  
Another pointed look. "I'll tell you later. Moving on, we have a woman, the only woman on Forenstech's list of PO's, by the way, and she's clean, too. Lives out near the wild horse preserve, runs a kennel, bought the suit for protection against the chemicals they use to clean out the runs."  
  
"Why not a HazMat suit?"  
  
"When she was looking to buy a protective suit, the crime scene suits were less expensive and more suited to her needs. And, yes, she knows who Barnes is, but claims that she hasn't had any time in the last few months to leave her place of business for much more than groceries and dog food. Three of her females had puppies."  
  
"Third and final. . .?"  
  
"Ah. See, here's where it gets. . .tricky."  
  
"Tricky how?" Sara smiled at him. "Sara, tricky how?"  
  
"John Scott."  
  
"Robbery suspect, I had to let him go on lack of evidence a few years ago. What about him?"  
  
She rolled her eyes. "Less clean. He bought it, refused to explain why, so I had Brass check out his credit cards. He bought three bodies' worth of lye. I called him back, asked him to explain that purchase. He says he's doing sculpture now, and he was experimenting with lye as a carving agent. I told him it was caustic, not artistic. He told me he bought the suit as protection against the lye. I told him he'll have a suit full of holes if he washes it. He hung up on me."  
  
"Suspect?"  
  
Sara shook her head, reaching for the list. "I don't think so." Showing him the paper, she pointed to one name on the list. "You know where Westin is?"  
  
"No," he said, looking at the name as she rose from her spot. "Where are you going?"  
  
"Is it too early for Chinese?" she asked, hunting through a newly organized stack of takeout menus. "I'm starving."  
  
"There's a box of Corn Flakes in the cupboard next to the refrigerator." Westin, where's Westin?  
  
"Don't eat Corn Flakes," she reminded.  
  
"And last week, that was just a fluke?" Westin, Westin, Westin.  
  
"Grissom, it's roach food. Last week, I'm pretty sure someone forgot to go to the grocery store, which left someone's wife with no choice."  
  
"Love you, too, sweetheart." Westin! "Near Idaho," he said gleefully.  
  
"What?" Sara inquired, turning from her exploration of the fridge to look at her husband. "Idaho?"  
  
"Westin. It's near Idaho. Right?"  
  
"Ten points for the bug man," she replied, returning to the couch with an apple. "Want a bite?"  
  
He shook his head at the proffered fruit, instead saying, "Tell me about Westin."  
  
"Aside from sounding exactly like a killer's last name, and being very close to Idaho, Westin has a very small police department and no crime lab. That, in and of itself, really doesn't mean anything. But it begs the question: What is a teeny little police department with no crime doing with a crime scene suit?"  
  
"The answer is. . .?"  
  
Sara gestured towards the phone with her apple. "I called. It was part of a larger purchase using money from a grant. But they haven't used it yet. It was stolen."  
  
"Stolen?" he asked, pronouncing the word slowly, an eyebrow creeping up.  
  
"Stolen," she confirmed. "And they know who stole it. Address, everything."  
  
"Name?"  
  
"Evan Morse. He's seventeen. Parents are divorced, father runs a cabinet company here in town. The timing of the killings coincides with the son's custody visits."  
  
"What about the lye?" Grissom asked, wide-eyed.  
  
"Mother works in a chemical supply place near Westin. The lye they had in stock is gone. The clerk checked when I called."  
  
"Gone?" His eyebrows contracted.  
  
"Gone, as in missing, as in not in stock, as in. . .gone." Her whole face twisted up into a broad grin. "Still mad at me?"  
  
"Not anymore," he said, looking at her with wonder in his eyes. "You've done very well tonight, for research."  
  
"So, breakfast, shower, couple of hours of sleep, then road trip?" she asked hopefully.  
  
"Sure." 


	16. chapter 16

An eerie five-note melody echoed through the room, emanating from a well- played and well-kept electric guitar. The sounds were sweet, familiar. "Is that a Nirvana song?" Sara asked, staring at the scruffy teen.  
  
"It's mine, but it's derived from 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'." He'd come through puberty with a beautiful voice, a little rough from the cigarettes he kept in the back pocket of his baggy jeans, but rich, with deep undertones. She guessed that every girl with eyes and ears and half a brain cell took one look and one listen and fell hard.  
  
"Better watch out, don't let Courtney Love find out," she said. "You wouldn't want to end up sued or worse."  
  
Evan Morse chuckled. "Yeah," he agreed with a cheeky and charming half smile. "I wouldn't want anyone to think I killed myself."  
  
"Not the way I want to go," she replied, giving the boy a smile.  
  
Grissom watched the exchange with a frown. Was Sara flirting with the kid? Not good.  
  
"So, Evan," Sara started as the teen restarted his song, "you know Gil Grissom?" She gestured towards the entomologist, who stepped closer to his wife.  
  
"I know of him," he told his guitar, chocolate locks falling into his face as he played the same five notes again and again. It sounded like a cross between the Nirvana song and the theme song to The X-Files, Sara noted, if such a thing could exist.  
  
"What about Gary Barnes?" Grissom asked, finally speaking. He'd tried to keep his suspicions about Sara's actions towards the kid out of his voice, but apparently missed some of it, because she turned and glared.  
  
"Know of him," Evan repeated. "He's freaky. Weird MO."  
  
"What's weird about beating the shit out of women?" Sara asked, getting an edge to her tone Grissom did not like at all.  
  
"Well, nothing really," the teen started, turning around to face the pair of criminalists. His eyes grew large. "Holy crap. No shit! No one's going to believe this!" he exclaimed, his expression indicating he was about a second away from jumping up and down and screaming like a twelve- year-old girl at a Backstreet Boys concert. "It's you!"  
  
The entomologist and the physicist exchanged puzzled glances and nodded.  
  
"Oh, wow, this. . .this rocks!" Evan nearly screeched, letting go of the guitar. "Holy fuck, you're Sara! And, and, and. . .that's Gil Grissom? Holy fuck!"  
  
"Ev, watch your language!" his mother called from somewhere in the house.  
  
Sara looked down at the ground, grinning, biting her inner cheek to fight the bursts of laughter she was sure were about to explode from her. The teen looked star-struck.  
  
Grissom looked embarrassed.  
  
"So, you know who we are now?" she said finally, her voice cracking from the laughter still threatening to bubble up.  
  
"I'm so stupid!" the boy chastised. "You're, like, my world. How did I not notice? Holy crap."  
  
"Your world?" Grissom asked, his forehead crinkling in concentration and suspicion.  
  
"Oh, yeah," the boy nodded vigorously. "Totally. Like, you two are my forensics gods. And Gary Barnes, he's like the devil." Evan blushed. "Only without all that religious crap, I know you're not into that, Mr. Grissom."  
  
"I'm more against the ritual than the actual belief, Evan," Grissom said cautiously. "How do you know that?"  
  
"I'd rather not say," the kid replied, picking up on the caution in his hero's tone and dropping the warmth in his own by twenty degrees. Sara guessed correctly that the boy was getting angry that Grissom wasn't nearly as excited to meet him as Evan had been.  
  
"So, Evan, you're a fan of our work?" she asked, diverting his creepily piercing glare from Grissom to her.  
  
"Unsung heroes of law enforcement. We all know who does all the work and doesn't get any credit." His fair skin flushed again, he wasn't like all the seventeen-year-old guys she'd known. "And, I know you're married and all, but if I had a really good picture of you, you'd be on my ceiling."  
  
She tried her best not to look startled. "Why your ceiling?"  
  
"So you'd be the last thing I saw before I went to sleep and the first thing I'd see when I wake up. And if I woke up in the middle of the night, I'd be reassured you were out saving lives and putting the bad people in prison."  
  
Her eyebrows were trying to decide between residing in the incredulously high position, or the contracted, over-the-eyes, creeped out position, finally choosing to do one of each. Grissom, meanwhile, was doing a slow burn behind her, his 'manly-man' protective-possessive instinct working overtime.  
  
"Well, uh. . .That's. . .very, uh. . .sweet, Evan," she stammered. The furnace behind her flared as the teenager gave Sara the grin that had probably caused and probably would continue to cause girls to swoon.  
  
"Evan?" The boy turned his glance to the stewing criminalist. "This is the fish."  
  
He turned the color of his tight shirt, olive green, for just an instant, swallowing hard. "How-? What?"  
  
"This is the fish," Grissom said smugly. "That mean something to you?"  
  
"I. . .uh. . .No!" Evan grabbed his guitar, racing through his melody, slowing it down as he slowed his breathing. "No."  
  
"You don't sound so sure," Grissom continued over the music. "That doesn't mean anything to you at all? What about Sean Gregory? Or Marshall and Peggy Williams?"  
  
"I don't know anything!" Evan protested. "Sean's death, I don't know anything!"  
  
"First name basis?" Sara noted. "You knew him."  
  
Five notes continued their trip around the room. "He lived down the street from my dad's place."  
  
"What about the Williams?"  
  
"Mr. Williams killed himself, after his wife died. That was in the paper. He wanted to kill himself." He played faster. "Why are you asking me about them? I don't know anything. The deaths, they're not related. Sean was a nice kid, and Mr. Williams was a great teacher, that's all I know. I don't know anything else."  
  
"He was your teacher?" Grissom asked.  
  
"Yeah, back in, like, second grade. Before my mom and I moved out here. He was always talking about his wife, how he loved her, couldn't live without her. Especially when he heard about my folks splitting up."  
  
Sara looked to Grissom, who nodded, and said, "Evan, you want to come back to Vegas with us?"  
  
"I didn't do anything!"  
  
She reached out, placed a hand on the guitar, forcing Evan to stop playing. "Listen to me. You have to come back to Las Vegas with us. I don't care if you did anything or not. There's a lot of evidence that suggests you are involved, okay? If you didn't do anything, you'll come back with us and explain. If you did. . ." Sara gave him a cold glare. "We'll have you arrested and tried for murder." 


	17. chapter 17

"He's seventeen!" Nick protested. "We can't possibly try him as an adult. He's just a kid!"  
  
Sara fiddled with the hem of her shirt, looking anywhere but at the rest of the team, Brass, or the DA. "He tortured an eight-year-old boy, Nick," she said finally. "I don't care how old he is."  
  
"But. . ."  
  
"But what?" she asked, meeting the Texan's angry eyes. "Evan Morse premeditated this whole thing. That's that. Seventeen or no, he deserves to be tried as an adult."  
  
Grissom regarded the pair with careful eyes, asking the DA, "Is that even a possibility? To try the kid as an adult?"  
  
The attorney brushed an imaginary piece of lint from the front of his charcoal three-piece suit. "Of course. Provided there's evidence."  
  
A cardboard box of evidence slapped on to the table. "You want evidence? I've got evidence," Sara said.  
  
A Baggied cassette hit the table, followed by the tape recorder found at the scene of the second murder. "He got one of his groupies to make the tape after a gig. Archie in A-V can testify the voices are identical."  
  
Shell casings. A Glock 9 semi-automatic. "Found it under the mother's bed. Lands and grooves match."  
  
Lab results from the pink foam around Sean Gregory's mouth. "Ice cream," she told the team. "He bought the kid an ice cream cone off a cart to get Sean to go with him."  
  
Sean's clothes. "Nothing on the clothing itself, but fibers matching these were found on the crime scene suit he stole from the police department."  
  
Pictures of the footprints left by the suit. "Same size as his print in a HazMat suit."  
  
Photos of the fourth body. Close-ups of the fish carved into the ribs. "Lye is chemically identical to the lye ordered by the mother's company. Those fish were carved with a tool similar to the carving tools used at Morse's high school. Art department at the school verify that one was removed approximately a month before the body was discovered. Victim is still a John Doe, he hasn't coughed up a name yet."  
  
A hand-held electric sanding machine. "This is the tool used to remove layers of the bone, found at the father's cabinet company. The body, according to Morse, was stripped at a construction site the night before a new foundation was poured. No evidence. This tool has trace amounts of human tissue consistent with its use in the grooves between the attachment and the handle."  
  
An Exacto knife. "Traces of blood from three different donors found on the blade. DNA links the blood to the first two victims and Sean Gregory. Used to carve messages into the victims."  
  
A shoebox, Vans, full of newspaper clippings. "About half are devoted to Gary Barnes, his crimes, trial, etcetera. The other half are mostly about different crimes in the Las Vegas area, common link is they all mention Grissom, myself, or the crime lab in some capacity."  
  
A stained, once white crime scene suit. "I found it under his bed. He stole it from the Westin police department, who bought it using a grant. The seams of the suit have trace amounts of dirt, fibers, you name it, from each victim and the suspect."  
  
Sara placed her hands palm-down on the table, looking each person in the room straight in the eye, daring them to challenge her. "There is no way we can try him as a juvie. Not with the weight of this evidence."  
  
"I still have one question," Warrick said. "He confessed, right? Isn't that worth something?"  
  
Grissom lifted his hand to Sara, stopping her astonished and surely angry response. "That's up to the DA and Evan's lawyer to decide."  
  
"Why aren't you guys seeing this?" Sara grilled. "Come on."  
  
"We're trying to make sure this is right, Sara," Catherine said calmly. "And until all the questions are answered, I'm not entirely comfortable trying this kid as an adult."  
  
"That's not your call to make!" the younger CSI exclaimed.  
  
"But if he is tried as an adult, and the evidence isn't impeccable, the jury's going to see a seventeen-year-old baby and an extremely harsh prosecuting team. They'll give him a lighter sentence," the blond pointed out. "We're on your side, Sara."  
  
Brass, who had remained silent until now, asked the question on everyone's mind. "Why you, Grissom? Why Barnes? And what the hell does that fish thing mean?"  
  
Grissom shrugged, his lips quirked into a smile, and replied wryly, "I'm his hero. He wanted to impress me. And Barnes. . .Barnes was his hero, too, in Evan's macabre little world. Barnes was the way to link everything together."  
  
"And the fish thing?" Warrick repeated.  
  
Husband and wife exchanged a glance and a smile, Sara resting a hand on Grissom's shoulder. "Plain and simple, 'This is the fish' means. . ." Sara trailed off, her grin shrinking. "It was just another game. In Evan's mind, he and Barnes had been carrying out a dialogue. This is where the tape comes in. He created a phrase that 'Barnes' would understand, a message. It's code for 'I'm going for Grissom.' 'I'm finishing what you started.' Take your pick, it's supposed to tell Barnes that Evan was going to finish ruining our lives. Barnes went after me, Evan went after Grissom."  
  
"Barnes told me to watch my back," Grissom remembered suddenly. "Remember, we asked what 'This is the fish' means, and he told me to watch my back. He warned me. Why would he do that?"  
  
"Gris, we discussed that," Sara hissed. "Barnes is not an on-again, off- again suspect. He is or he isn't."  
  
"But why would he warn me, Sara?"  
  
"Because he plays games, Grissom. He warned you for the same reason he suggested that you're too old for me. To screw with us, to make us uneasy, because that's what he likes."  
  
The two scientists sent piercing gazes at each other, creating an uncomfortable silence to echo around the room. Catherine looked at Warrick, who looked at Nick, who looked at Brass, who looked at the floor, each trying and failing to break the silence. The DA finally did, clearing his throat, dropping his eyes to his watch. "Well, uh, look at the time," he stammered uncomfortably. "I'm going to charge this kid, if you're ready. We'll try him as an adult. Brass?"  
  
"Yeah," the cop muttered. "I'll go get my handcuffs."  
  
  
  
A clinical obsession with word games. Huh. Eleven letters. Grissom puzzled over the clue, alternately looking at the definition and the white squares waiting patiently for inking. It was probably far easier than he was making it, this was the secret of master-level crossword puzzles. Obsession with word games. Were crosswords considered word games?  
  
Were trials considered word games? A battle of words, he decided. Whoever spoke a better game won.  
  
Who would the jury believe when it was crunch time for Evan Morse? The prosecution, who had the better case, or the defense, who were playing the 'he's a minor' card for all they were worth.  
  
Premeditation versus being swayed by a serial killer. A paranoid obsession and scheme or an innocent fascination with forensic science and crime? A clinical obsession with word games.  
  
The jury wouldn't be able to look the boy in the eye, see what he had seen just days before the trial started.  
  
  
  
"Would you die for him?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Why not? Don't you love him?" His orange jumpsuit glared off his wild eyes, orange and blue twisting unnervingly.  
  
"Not enough to leave him with that kind of guilt."  
  
"You'd rather try a strong offense than a sacrifice. I should've guessed."  
  
"Evan, why are we here?"  
  
"I'm in fucking prison, Sidle. You're here out of sympathy, a need to understand me. I'm giving you the opportunity. As for Grissom-" The boy glared at the man behind the glass, spitting out the name as if it were a synonym for 'traitor'. "Grissom, he's here for the same reasons you are. And to rub it in, that he's better than me. Just because I'm wearing this jumpsuit instead of normal clothes."  
  
"You put yourself here, Evan. You made that division."  
  
"You put me here. Hiding behind a wall of drugs and evidence. I can see you for the weak little bitch you really are."  
  
"God, you're more like Barnes than anyone would think. It's not working."  
  
"Don't compare me to Gary. Don't you ever compare me to Gary. He's far better than I'll ever be. He's a god."  
  
"He's no god, Evan. Neither are you. Barnes isn't a hero, he's a demon. I just hope the jury sees that you are, too."  
  
  
  
She'd been a little shaky when she came out of the interrogation room, spooked. He could see in her eyes that somewhere in her mind Barnes and Evan were twisting, morphing, becoming interchangable. The boy's accusation of weakness struck her more than she wanted to admit, and Grissom watched later that night as she popped a caffeine pill and two sugar pills in lieu of the pain killers he knew she wanted. Mesmerized by her hypnotic pacing, he finally said, "You're not weak. You're not hiding behind anything."  
  
Her response was to stop, give him the finger, and continue pacing.  
  
He shrugged with the memory, going back to the crossword. Hmm. An obsession with word games. Eleven letters.  
  
The door banged against the wall as the tall brunette strode into the apartment angrily, slamming shut as she backhanded it into place, throwing her bag onto the floor. Sara scanned the room with fiery eyes, squinting at the stack of mail on the kitchen counter, Grissom's wary smile, the open book of crosswords, and finally at the stereo. "What the hell is this? Peggy Lee?" she spat.  
  
Love all kinds of weather, as long as we're together.  
  
"And are you doing another crossword puzzle? You're obsessed, Grissom! Always with the crossword puzzles.geez. God forbid you wash the dishes."  
  
"Excuse me?" he squeaked, completely taken aback.  
  
I love being here with you!  
  
"You heard me. Chores, Grissom. Unless you want to hire a housekeeper, you have to start helping out around here."  
  
"Sara, is something wrong?"  
  
She shook her head. "No, not a damn thing. The jury came back on Evan Morse. Not guilty, by reasons of insanity."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I know, I couldn't believe it. That kid isn't crazy. Crafty, yes. But not crazy." She inhaled deeply, letting the air out in a rush. "I know the justice system isn't fair, and the population as a whole isn't exactly brilliant, but. . ."  
  
"I thought they'd see him for him, too."  
  
A brilliant grin broke out over her face. "They did. Guilty, all charges."  
  
His jaw dropped, he stared at her with astonishment. "Sara!"  
  
She shrugged. "Gotcha."  
  
Grissom gaped at her as she crossed the room, dropping onto the couch beside him. She examined the puzzle closely, checking clues and spelling. "Which clue are you on?"  
  
"Uh, thirty-four down. A clinical obsession with word games. Eleven letters."  
  
"G-I-L-G-R-I-S-S-O-M. No, ten letters." He play-glared. She grinned. "Paronomania."  
  
"Never heard of it."  
  
She raised an eyebrow. "Funny, because it's you." Seeing his hesitation to use the word, she grabbed the pen from his hand and filled in the squares. Sara picked up the book, flipping to the back, scowled. "Where are the answers?"  
  
Grissom took the book back gently. "It's a Master-level, Sara. There aren't answers." He carefully put the book back on the coffee table, as gentle as if it were a baby.  
  
"Ah, that's my man, doing crossword puzzles in pen when there is no solution." She paused, listening to the music again. "Why are you listening to Peggy Lee?"  
  
"Just this song," he said. "My mother loved it, played it all the time when I was four, before she lost her hearing."  
  
His utter charm takes me away.  
  
"It's just not anything I would've thought you would like. You're a classical guy. And Pink Floyd, which I may never understand, by the way."  
  
"Well, what can I say?" he asked. " 'I love being here with you.'"  
  
[okay, well, that's the end. Hope you enjoyed it.] 


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